Much against the trend of results, Grandmaster and National junior champion Karthik Venkataraman and GM-elect Harsha Bharathakoti found the going tough as the Delhi International Open Grandmasters chess tournament threw up unexpected opening-round heroes on Wednesday.
Though the top 19 seeds were among those with a point each, Karthik faced unexpected resistance from Air Force recruit K. Srikanth and eventually split the point after 72 moves.
If Karthik needed any consolation after dropping half a point, he had to only look at Harsha’s plight.
Harsha, awaiting the confirmation of his Grandmaster title, ran into the reigning National under-9 champion A.R. Ilamparthi, rated 561 points below at 1920, crashed to a 43-move defeat.
On a day when almost every overseas GM won, Uzbek Marat Dzhumaev was held by Nitish Das. Samriddhaa Ghosh proved equal to International Master N.R. Vignesh in 41 moves following a sequence of perpetual checks.
Important first round results:
Rajarshi Dutta lost to Farrukh Amonatov (Tjk); Alexandr Predke (Rus) bt P. Ramakrishna; Lakshmi Krishna Bhushan lost to Levan Pantsulaia (Geo); Vaibhav Suri bt Isha Sharma; Vellanki Jayachandra lost to Ivan Rozum (Rus); Ivan Popov (Rus) bt Dilshad Mohammad; Arpan Das lost to Luka Paichadze (Geo).
Aleksej Aleksandrov (Blr) bt Sourth Biswas; K. Sai Nirupama lost to Abhijeet Gupta; S. L. Narayanan bt Manoj Mishra; Om Kadam lost to M. Karthikeyan; Karthik Venkataraman drew with K. Srikanth; Harsha Bharathakoti lost to A.R. Ilamparthi; Samriddhaa Ghosh drew with N. R. Vignesh; Nitish Das drew with Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb).