Sixteen-year-old Ranindu Liyange from Ananda College was crowned National Chess Champion while Nethmi Fernando of Girls’ High School won the Women’s National Championship.

Liyanage, who was playing excellent chess from the beginning concluded with a total of 10 ½ points out of possible thirteen. He suffered a loss to CC Weerasinghe at the penultimate round gave only three draws to LMST De Silva, Lakshitha Randil and Gayantha Dissanayake and beat all other opponents to reach the top spot.

Fernando, another 16-year-old scored 10 points out of 13. She had an excellent start in the first half of the event scoring 6 ½ points out of 7 games and started the second half of the event with a loss of two games to Sandeepani Tharushi and Newanji Hewawasam. But she came back strongly to score 3 ½ out of 4 in the last four rounds.

Minul Doluweera of Royal College Colombo, who scored 10 points out of the total 13, lost to Liyanage in the championship round, to finish with the silver medal.

After losing her first three games of the event Sandeepani Tharushi of Devi Balika came back strongly to score 9 ½ points tied with Ashvini Pavalachandran of Wycherley International School. Sandeepani got the Silver Medal on a tie-breaker.