Ravichandran checkmates Volkov; Bhagwat holds top seed
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.
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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
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