Smooth sailing for seeded players at Parsvnath

New Delhi, Jan 15 (UNI) Pre-tournament favourite Alexei Dreev and national champion Surya Shekhar Ganguly kicked off their campaign in style as seeded players found it smooth sailing in the first round of the 5th Parsvnath International Chess tournament here today.

Top seed Dreev wasted little time in disposing of Manjunath Jain who found the going tough from the opening itself against his illustrious opponent. The Russian gave a temporary rook sacrifice and won in emphatic fashion.

Four-time national Champion and second seed here, Surya Shekhar Ganguly had to work a little harder but in the end his victory over YVK Chakravarthy also came in relatively quick time.

Among the young stars, former World under-10 champion Sahaj Grover got a walkover as his opponent failed to turn up for the event and ending on the winning side was Vidit S Gujrathi and Fenil Shah while local boy Vaibhav Suri went down fighting.

Among the women players, double grandmaster norm holder S Vijayalakshmi scored an easy victory over N Saripalli while Women International Master Kruttika Nadig also had it easy against Jotish Joy in the Rs 8.75 Lakhs prize money tournament.

In other matches, Indian Grandmasters too began on a winning note as Abhijit Kunte beat Pratik Patil, Neelotpal Das defeated Vinod Adane, Pravin Thipsay outwitted Prince Bajaj, Dibyendu Barua got the better of Sukumar Menon and Deepan Chakravarthy outplayed Satish Thakur.

The event is being played under FIDE's Swiss rules and there will be 10 rounds in all. Players from 11 countries are participating in this biggest open of the country and there are 13 Grandmasters in the field of 342 participants -- the highest number thus far in the five editions with the winner's purse of Rs two lakh.

UNI