An excellent day for the Indians

On the flip side, top rated Indian Krishnan Sasikiran spoiled his chances with a draw against Holland’s Erwin L’Ami.

International master Sriram Jha and Grandmaster Abhijit Kunte, who held stars like Alexander Grichuk of Russia and Alexei Shirov of Spain to creditable draws, were more than impressive in the tournament.

Last year’s World Junior champion Abhijeet Gupta also played out a draw with a higher rated Nikita Vitiugov of Russia.

However, the day belonged to Parimarjan who faced the Berlin defense, an opening he was not quite prepared as it was not a part of Milov’s repertoire earlier.

Showing signs of his growing positional acumen, the Delhi lad seized the initiative in a queen less middle game typical of the opening and never gave any chances to Milov.

Sandipan faced the Slav defense of Kobalia and sacrificed a pawn for positional compensation early in the opening. But his Russian opponent failed to work out an effective counter play and was slowly outmaneuvered.

“He made some mistakes in the middle game making my task easy,” Sandipan said after the game.

Ganguly, meanwhile, is getting big edge over his opponents, thanks to his newly built repertoire around the queen pawn with white pieces.

The Asian champion, who is also known as a second to Viswanathan Anand, used his expertise against the nimzo Indian defense to cause an early dent in black’s position and squeezed out Filippov’s defensive resources in quick time.

But Sriram had to work for to earn the draw against Grischuk out of a queen pawn opening where the former played white.

Grischuk kept pressing in an equal position for a long time and Jha had to wriggle out with a timely pawn sacrifice leading to a drawn endgame.

Abhijeet Kunte had it easy against Shirov, who played the Queen’s gambit while Abhijeet Gupta only got a slight edge that petered in to a draw against Vitiugov.

Results of Indians after Round one: Krishnan Sasikiran drew with Erwin L’Ami (Ned), Parimarjan Negi beat Vadim Milov (Sui), Surya Shekhar Ganguly beat Anton Filippov (Uzb), Sandipan Chanda beat Mikhail Kobalia (Rus), Sriram Jha drew with Alexander Grischuk (Rus), Abhijit Kunte drew with Alexei Shirov (Esp), Abhijeet Gupta drew with Nikita Vitiugov (Rus).