Sasi wins first round after long struggle

The tournament is certainly the strongest open event of the world with more than a hundred Grandmasters in the group ‘A’, forming the first round of the main section. The players are fighting for very high stakes with a total prize pool of $15,00,000 (Rs.68 lakh approx) for three groups A, B and C.

The winner in the group ‘A’ will go home richer by $25,000 while in groups ‘B’ and ‘C’ the first prize is $6,000 and 3,000 respectively. There are 203 players in group ‘A’, 246 in group ‘B’ and 206 in group ‘C’ making it one of the biggest chess extravaganza of the world. There will be nine rounds in all to determine the winner.

The group ‘A’ winner will find a slot in the next Dortmund Sparkassen chess meeting, a high profile event to be held in Germany latter this year.

The first round had all the customary results barring a few. The Indians were off to a good start generally in the ‘A’ group with International Master Lanka Ravi going down to wonder-kid Grandmaster Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine. Ravi played Black and was taken to task in the middle game by the young prodigy, who was once the youngest Grandmaster in the world.

Although Sasikiran was the only winner in this group, Sandipan Chanda and seasoned GM Praveen Thipsay also gave good performances with the former holding higher-rated and former world juniors’ champion Grandmaster Levon Aronian of Germany to an easy draw and the latter signing peace with GM Mikhail Ulibin of Russia.

Sasikiran gave an emphatic display of his ever-growing positional prowess against Kosyrov who played Black. The opening was a queen’s gambit declined where the Indian obtained a little advantage in one of the popular variations.

The centre was semi-closed that is typical of the opening for the major part of the game but Sasikiran worked out his plan in style with thematic manoeuvres to exert pressure on the king side.

Other winner in this group was IM Dinesh Kumar Sharma, who had little trouble beating Turkan Mamedjarova of Azerbaijan. But IM P Konguvel and IM S Kidambi suffered losses at the hands of Spyridon Ilandzis Greece and Umut Atakisi of Turkmenistan.