Sixteen-year-old city chess player Nutakki Priyanka is just one norm away from emerging as International Woman Master (IWM) when she clinched the second norm at the recently-concluded 3rd Kolkata Open tournament. She gathered the first at the 2nd Sharjah Masters tournament at Sharjah in April.

Speaking to The Hindu, Priyanka, whose Elo rating is 2180, said her shifting of base to Ponnur in Guntur district to train under senior coach G. Murali Krishna helped her improve leaps and bounds thus paving the way to gather the crucial norms.

“After training under Bobba Veerabhadra Rao and Rama Raju (Hyderabad) in the formative years, we decided to train under Murali sir , who resides at Ponnur. Incidentally he also coaches National champion and Grandmaster M.R. Lalith Babu,” said Priyanka’s mother Durga. Training under Murali Krishna proved productive for Priyanka, as she churned out a series of encouraging performances helping her come close to the coveted IWM title.

Big success embraced Priyanka in 2011 when she won the world U-10 girls’ title with one round to spare in Moribor, Slovenia. Priyanka wants to become a Grandmaster and dreams of emulating Koneru Humpy.

Next three months are going to be challenging for the young champion as she will be competing in Panevezys Open tournament in Lithuania in June, Najdorf memorial tournament at Warsaw and Poland-Czech Open in Czech Republic in July and RTU Open in Lativa in August.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Andhra Pradesh / by J.R. Sridharan / Vijayawada – June 06th, 2018