As expected, Viswanathan Anand made a winning start, but the country’s second-best player P. Harikrishna crashed to a stunning loss on a mixed day for the Indians in the World Cup here on Sunday.
Playing black, Anand needed 66 moves to tame Malaysian teenager Li Tian Yeoh in their Sicilian game. In the middle game, Yeoh chose to trade his queen for a rook and a knight but failed to get enough compensation.
Eventually, Anand’s queen proved too strong in the endgame. He managed to push his queen-rook pawn to the seventh rank. At this point, Yeoh gave up.
Anand now needs at least a draw with the white pieces in the second game of Round One to advance. All the other Indians, barring Harikrishna and National champion M. Karthikeyan, drew their opening games.
Earlier, Harikrishna lost to Cuba’s Yuri Gonzalez Vidal in 36 moves.
In an equal battle, Hari’s decision to go for a kingside pawn on the 20th move turned the scales dramatically in favour of Yuri. He saw the precise continuation and, in the endgame, involving queens and a rook each, moved within three moves of delivering a checkmate when the Indian resigned.
B. Adhiban, playing black, signed peace in 15 moves with Vietnam’s Ngyuen Ngoc Truong Son while S.P. Sethuraman took a move more to reach a similar agreement with Ruslan Ponomariov.
The results (round one, game one): Li Tian Yeoh (Malaysia, 2478) lost to Viswanathan Anand (2794); Yuri Ganzalez Vidal (Cuba, 2547) bt P. Harikrishna (2741); Vidit Gujrathi (2702) drew with Neuris Delgado Ramirez (Paraguay, 2614); Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son (Vietnam, 2629) drew with B. Adhiban (2670); Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine, 2694) drew with S. P. Sethuraman (2617); Deep Sengupta (2589) drew with Wang Hao (China, 2701); Francisco Vallejo Pons (Spain, 2717) bt M. Karthikeyan (2574).