Ravikumar stuns Gokhale, Chanda holds Bahadur to draw

Gokhale, with black pieces, opted for the French Defence but unwisely captured a pawn in the opening itself. That cramped his pieces and allowed Ravikumar some compensation. After the queens were exchanged, Gokhale sought some initiative by sacrificing a rook but in the process overlooked a mating threat from Ravikumar.

In other results, top seed RB Ramesh (2496) defeated SVC Chakravarty in the first board, Krishna Soni fell to Punnuswamy Konguvel in the third board while, Neelotpal Das, winner of the Aurangabad Chess Tournament, defeated Prem Chugh on the fourth board.

Results (1st round)

SVC Chakravarty lost to RB Ramesh; Sandeepan Chanda drew Rajesh Bahadur; Krishna Soni lost to Punnuswamy Konguvel; Neelotpal Das bt Prem Chugh; Ravikumar bt Chandrashekar Gokhale; Lanka Ravi bt Rashmin Pulekar; Prasad Deshmukh lost to Atanu Lahiri; Ravi Hegde bt B Roy Choudhary; SR Patnaik lost to K Murugan; SR Rathod lost to VN Ghate; Tania Sachdev lost to P Mitrakant; Shankar Roy bt KV Anilkumar.