International Master K. Ratnakaran caused a major upset, defeating seventh seed Grandmaster Zhong Zhang of Singapore in the first round of the Asian Continental chess championship here.
Ratnakaran turned the tables on the former Chinese after staring at a defeat for the major part of the game. This victory might be the launch pad for what would be Ratnakaran’s final Grandmaster norm.
Grandmaster Koneru Humpy suffered a reversal in the opener as she went down to Asyl Abdyjapar of Kyrgyzstan.
Humpy and Harika are the two woman players taking part in the open section instead of the women’s category. Harika ended up drawing her first round game with Basher Iyti of Syria. Meanwhile, Vidit Gujrathi put it across Bangladeshi Grandmaster Enamul Hossain. K. Sasikiran was also up to the task in crushing Petr Kostenko of Kazakhstan.
Important Indian results: Enamul Hossain (Ban) lost to Vidit Santosh Gujrathi; K. Sasikiran bt Petr Kostenko (Kaz); P. Karthikeyan lost to S.P. Sethuraman; S.S. Ganguly bt Sharavdorj Dashzegve (Mgl); K. Ratnakaran bt Zhong Zhang (Sin); Abhijeet Gupta drew with Parham Maghsoodloo (Iri); S. Nitin lost to A.R. Salem Saleh (UAE); Deep Sengupta drew with Zhanat Saiyn (Kaz); Asyl Abdyjapar (Kgz) bt Koneru Humpy; Sandipan Chanda bt Semetey Tologontegin (Kgz); Li Di (Chn) lost to M.R. Lalith Babu; Salih Akar Ali Salih (Irq) drew with G.N. Gopal; D. Harika drew with Basher Iyti (Syr); V. Vishnu Prasanna bt Abdulwahhab Ahmed Abdulsattar (Irq); Abhijit Kunte bt Assad Mamyrbay (Kaz); Debashis Das drew with Keshav Shrestha (Nep); M.R. Venkatesh drew with G.C. Anurud (Sri); Nassar Marwan (Lib) lost to S.L. Narayanan.
Women: Nguyen Thi Thanh An (Vie) lost to Padmini Rout; Sarasadat Khademalsharieh (Iri) bt B. Pratyusha; Eesha Karavade bt Minoo Asgarizadeh (Iri); Ranaa Hakimifard (Iri) bt Tania Sachdev; Alshaeby Boshra (Jor) lost to S. Vijayalakshmi; Nibal Algildah (Syr) lost to Soumya Swaminathan; Alymbay Kyzy Aizhan (Kgz) lost to Mary Ann Gomes; Mona Al-Harmoudi (UAE) lost to Bhakti Kulkarni; Nisha Mohota bt Aseel Odeh (Jor).
