Ukrainian GM the fastest winner in Round 1

The  Ukrainian Grandmaster with an international rating of 2581 scored over India’s Siddaya Gavi in a little over two hours in 33 moves as the eighth edition of the open kicked off.

The Chennai  Open Grandmasters chess tournament has kicked off at the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium here with more than 200 entries from all over the world. Among  the local lads who played on the top boards, the focus was on 12-year-old Harshavardhan, son of former Indian Bank and National B player Gopalakrishnan. The left-handed Harshavardhan played second seed Ivan Popov of Russia.

In contrast, top seed Boris Grachev of Russia met 52-year-old Virender Singh Negi of Indian Airlines. Both the Indian players offered stiff resistance on the top boards. The  tournament is played over 10 rounds.  

The time control is 90 minutes each with  30 second increment from the first move. This year also this tournament has attracted  entries from 19 Grandmasters, 21 IMs , 2 WGMs and 3 WIMs making it very attractive for norm seekers out of which 24 are foreign participants  from countries  such as Russia, Ukraine, Bangladesh, France, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy , Netherlands, Vietnam and Uzbekistan. The top seed is the Russian Grandmaster Boris Grachev (Elo rating  2652). The total prize fund is Rs 11 lakh and the winner will take home Rs 2 lakh.