Pune: Top seed GM Farrukh Amonatov of Tajikistan, fresh from his triumph at the KIIT GM Open, a couple of days back, was at his combinative self with the White pieces in a Sicilian game against Anish Gandhi in the first round on Tuesday in the Maharashtra International Open GrandMaster chess tournament being played at the Balewadi Sports Complex here.
Sacrificing his bishop for a couple of pawns, Amonatov caught Gandhi’s King in the centre without the shelter of the castle. Gandhi’s pieces were pushed back and bogged down in passive defence. Gandhi was forced to give up his queen for a rook and ended on the losing side after 35 moves.
In the Queen’s Gambit Declined Game, M. R. Lalit Babu, the highest rated Indian in fray was offered stiff resistance by Joshua A P. Lalit Babu however won a pawn and steered the game to an ending where each had a rook and minor piece each.
Fourth seed Alexei Federov kept his king in the centre without castling against Tejaswani Sagar. Inaccurate play by Tejaswani had Federov gobbling up a couple of pawns to pocket the game after 43 moves.
Fifth seed Deep Sengupta and Atul Dahale were involved in a Pirc defence game where Deep enjoying a positional edge gained a pawn, and simplified the position by exchanging pieces to reach a queen and pawns each ending. On the 38th turn, Dahale resigned when Deep threatened to promote one of his pawn into a queen.
Boris Svachenko easily brushed past Praveen Kumar after 42 moves of a Neo-Grunfeld Defence.
Round 1 Results: GM Farrukh Amonatov (1) bt Anish Gandhi (0); WIM Tejaswini Sagar (0) lost to GM Alexei Federov (1); GM Deep Sengupta (1) bt Atul Dahale (0); Aanjaneya Phatak (0) lost to GM V Karthik (1); GM Mihail Nikitenko (1) bt C M Manisha Kadam (0).
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