FIDE Cadets World Cup: Indian youngsters win two medals in Georgia

Indian players won two medals at the FIDE Cadets World Cup in Batumi, Georgia on Tuesday.

Pratitee Bordoloi clinched the silver medal in the girls' U12 category while Sattwik Swain won bronze in the U8 Open category.

This was the inaugural edition of the FIDE Cadets World Cup which had six medal events, two each (Open, Girls) across three U8, U10, and U12 age categories. Each of the six categories had 48 players divided into two groups of 24 each.

Pratitee, who participated in the Girls U12 category, topped Group B with 6/7 points to confirm her place in the gold medal match against Group A winner Tianhao Xue of China. 

The Close final

The final was a very close bout as both players played out a draw in the two classical matches to force a rapid tiebreaker. Then, with one win each in rapid, the match went into the blitz tiebreaker.

The first blitz match ended in a draw but in the second match, Tianhao claimed the victory with the black pieces and claimed the championship title with a score of 3.5-2.5.

Bronze for Sattwik

In the men's U8 category, Sattwik finished second in Group A with 6.5/7 points to book a place in the bronze medal match. He missed the gold medal match on the tie breaks as the group winner Rizat Ulan of Kazakhstan also had the same number of points (6.5).

However, he clinched a 1.5-0.5 win over Azad Khuduzade of Azerbaijan to confirm his bronze medal.

Sattwik started the bronze medal match with a clinical win in the first match with his black pieces.

Then, he followed this up with a tactical draw with the white pieces to confirm his victory. However, the Indian team missed out on any medal in the U10 age category.