Ravichandran checkmates Volkov; Bhagwat holds top seed

Dubai: Talented youngster Tejas Ravichandran and seasoned Vinod Bhagwat hogged the limelight with impressive results on day one of the 12th Dubai International Open Chess Tournament which started here on Tuesday. Ravichandran made Russian Grandmaster Sergey Volkov suffer in the endgame when the latter refused to take a draw through repetition of moves and went on to score a remarkable victory while Bhagwat held top seed Grandmaster Gabriel Sargissian to a creditable draw.The higher rated Indians went on to score fine victories to start their campaign on a positive note in the USD 45,000 prize money tournament. 2008 World junior champion Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta was amongst the first to finish his game when he accounted for Women Grandmaster Mona Khaled of Egypt in a game that lasted less than an hour. Playing black, Abhijeet punished reckless tactics of his opponent from an irregular opening set up. Third seeded Grandmaster Parimarjan Negi also came good against Nargiz Umudova of Azerbaijan even though he was stretched a little bit. Playing black, Parimarjan also started his campaign from an irregular opening. Ravichandran was the star of the day as he tormented Volkov in a slightly better endgame arising out of an Exchange Slav. The Russian was reluctant to take a draw keeping in mind the huge gap in ratings and paid heavy dividends in this 101 mover. Bhagwat came up with an imaginative display to hold Sargissian from a Nimzo Indian defense game. The complexities that Sargissian entered did not have many risks for Bhagwat who played white and the Armenian was forced to sign peace vide repetition of moves. The other two Indian Grandmasters in the fray also started off with facile victories. Raja Ram Laxman defeated Pabalan Rocky of Philippines while S Arun Prasad scored a flawless win against Salah Romany of Egypt. An unexpected defeat for International Master M R Venkatesh was the only upset result from Indian perspective when the out-of-sort Chennai player went down to local hopeful Abdulrahman Al Yafee. Amongst the Indian girls, 2008 world junior girls` champion and Grandmaster norm holder D Harika coasted to an easy victory against Bayat Shohreh of Iran while International Master Eesha Karavade scored over UAE`s Sultan Ibrahim. Under-14 world champion amongst girls` Padmini Rout also defeated Daniel Yarur Elsaca of Chile whiel S Meenakshi proved much stronger than Al-Hammadi Fatma of UAE. While two Grandmaster norm aspirants M R Lalith Babu and M Shyam Sundar won their games easily, Sahaj Grover came back from the jaws of defeat to beat Yape Pucholo of Philippines. PTI