Vedant holds third seeded Kotronias

Vedant Goswami of India caused a mild flutter when he held third seed Grandmaster Vasilios Kotronias of Greece on the opening day of the Commonwealth Chess championship here today. The youngster from Rajasthan came up with a deadly counter-attack with Caro Kann defence to neutralise whatever advantage Kotronias had before the latter agreed for a truce in 37 moves. In the other matches, endgame wizard Ruslan Scherbakov of Russia accounted for International Women’s Master Nisha Mohota in queen pawn game. From an apparently equal position the Russian GM carved out a thoughtful win in 45 moves while Indian GMs Abhijit Kunte and P Harikrishna recorded wins against lesser known opponents.

Top seed GM Rustom Kasimzanov of Uzbekistan had to use all his experience to overcome IWM S Meenakshi in 37 moves. Among other Indians in action, reigning British champion R B Ramesh beat his compatriot Nikhilesh Kumar while Ravi Hegde made short work of teenager Raghavi. Neelotpal Das exploited wonder boy Prasanna Rao’s mistake in stonewall opening to score an easy win.