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Harikrishna, Tania shocked in continental chess opener
Grandmaster P Harikrishna and woman Grandmaster Tania Sachdev's campaign started on a disappointing note as both suffered shock opening round defeats in the ninth Asian Continental Chess Championship here.
Grandmaster P Harikrishna and woman Grandmaster Tania Sachdev's campaign started on a disappointing note as both suffered shock opening round defeats in the ninth Asian Continental Chess Championship here.
Fifth seed Harikrishna was outdone in a Slav Exchange game in which China's Lou Yiping remained calm and went for the exchange variation. Harikrishna could have equalised but went for an erroneous plan in a complicated position and ended up on the losing side.
In the women's section, third seed Tania Sachdev also crashed to a defeat against lower ranked Chinese Jue Wang on a mixed day for the Indian contingent.
Tania misplayed a clear better position out of a closed Ruy Lopez and it was a shock for her to find in the postmortem that she missed out on a win on a few occasions before blundering away in the endgame.
Grandmaster K Sasikiran proved much stronger than International Master Oliver Dimakling of Philippines who could not handle the middle game well from a Queen pawn opening.
The game was a methodical squeeze by second seed Sasikiran who started his campaign on a positive note. Padmini Rout too got off to a flier with a brilliant victory over Dzhurabek Khamrakulov of Uzbekistan.
