By IANS,
Chennai: The inaugural United India Insurance-CDCA FIDE Rated chess tournament (below 2200) took off with an upset as 12th seed Jaswant G. lost to Sai Saravanan here Wednesday.
Handling the middle game with expertise, Sai Saravanan cornered Jaswant’s king. A series of exchanges saw Sai emerge in a winning position despite being a piece down. Jaswant gave up after three hours and 74 moves.
Top seed Elijah Emojong from Uganda defeated Ashwin Raam while on another board, veteran National “A” player Kantilal Dave from Rajasthan, was fully extended by Mukesh Kumar.
Among the seeded players, former National Age group champion N. Raghavi, Asian youth medalist PV Nandhidhaa and Woman FIDE Master Srija Seshadri scored facile victories in the opening round.
The international FIDE rated tournament with 358 players from four nations has a record 96 prizes on offer. Conducted under the Swiss system, the event runs for 11 rounds and concludes on Sunday.
Important results (Indians unless specified):
Round 1: Ashwin Raam S lost to Elijah Emojong (Uganda), M L Abhilash Reddy bt G Raju, Mukesh Kumar S M lost to Dave Kantilal, P V Nandhidhaa bt T K Kumar, Yella Manikanta lost to N Raghavi, S Prasannaa bt R Surya, G Vikram lost to Venkata Krishna Karthik K, Naveen Hegde bt R Praggnandhaa, T Keerthana Maran lost to Ramakrishna Perumalla, Sumit Grover bt R Arivalagan, P Jagadish lost to Mugil Jayavel, Jaswant G lost to Sai Saravanan K, Alan Divia Raj lost to Arjun Vairavan (Singapore), S N Surya Prakash drew Kaavya Ramesh (USA), Goguloth Malsur drew S S Taanya.