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ndonesia's 15-year-old Medina Warda Aulia continued her stellar performance by beating Yulia Kotchetkova of Slovakia in the 8th round of the Japfa Women Grandmaster Chess Tournament on Thursday.

Medina stopped Kotchetkova after 30 moves to make amends for her loss to the same opponent in the third round.

'The position was in the balance early, but she strayed from theory and I had a good move to counter her. I managed to wrest positional advantage,' Medina said after the game.

'In the later stage of the game, she fell to another wrong move. That gave me a piece,' Medina added.

Medina tricked her opponent by sacrificing a knight on the 26th move.

'If Yulia had refused to take the knight by playing 26 Kfb, the position could still have been balanced,' a chess observer and official of Indonesian Chess Association (Percasi) said.

'After 27 Qxd1, Black's position was untenable,' the official said.

In the ninth round, played later in the afternoon, Medina was held to a draw by Alina L'ami of Romania to give her an overall 4.5 points, equal to Kotchetkova.

Sophie Milliet is now the sole leader with 5.5 points after she drew with L'ami before winning over fellow Frenchwoman Natacha Benmesbah in a later round.

L'ami shares second place with Chelsie Monica Sihite, half a point behind the leader, while Benmesbah is last with 2.5 points.

The six players will back to the match hall at the Serba Guna building in Senayan on Friday for the last round of games.

The tournament looks like being something that Medina wants to forget, now that she has failed to score at least 6.5 as expected for her to attaint a women's grandmaster title.

'I was too preoccupied about having to meet the 6.5 target. That's already over and now I have become more relaxed,' Medina said.

She still hopes to improve her collection and position in the rankings when she faces fellow Indonesian Chelsie on Friday. The two already met in Round 5 with the result in favor of Chelsie.

The other two pairings on the closing day will pit L'ami against Benmesbah and Milliet against Kotchetkova.

Round 8 game

White: Medina Warda Aulia (2321)
Black: Yulia Kochetkova (2314)

Japfa WGM Tournament

1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5 4.Nf3 Nbd7 5. Bc4 Be7 6. 0'0 0'0 7. Re1 c6 8. a4 a5 9. h3 Nb6 10. Ba2 Nfd7 11. Be3 exd4 12. Bxd4 Nc5 13. Bxc5 dxc5 14. Qe2 Qd6 15. Rad1 Qg6 16. Kh1 Be6 17. Ne5 Qf6 18. Ng4 Qg6 19. Bxe6 Qxe6 20. f4 Rad8 21. f5 Qc4 22. Qf2 Rxd1 23. Rxd1 Rd8 24. f6 Rxd1+ 25. Nxd1 Bxf6 26. Qg3 Qf1+ 27. Kh2 Qxd1 28. Nxf6+ Kf8 29. Qb8+ Ke7 30. Ng8+ 1'0