Delhi International Open Chess: Shivika stuns Laxman; Shuaau draws against grandmaster Camilo

With the players from top-half of the draw facing those from the bottom-half, excitement was at a premium at the Tivoli Garden resort here.

REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE: In all, 298 participants from 13 countries started the 10-round competition and in the first round, 65 players registered victories.

Two rank underdogs Shivika Rohilla and Muhammed Shuaau enjoyed the best result of their budding careers when they embarrassed their Grandmaster rivals in varying degrees to inject some excitement on an otherwise predictable opening day of Delhi International Open chess tournament on Tuesday.

Shivika brought down R. R. Laxman and Shuaau, from Maldives, drew with Columbian GM Camilo Rios Cristhian to contribute to the surprises of the day.

With the players from top-half of the draw facing those from the bottom-half, excitement was at a premium at the Tivoli Garden resort here. The top 21 players, led by Arjun Erigaisi, began their campaign on a winning note.

In all, 298 participants from 13 countries started the 10-round competition. In the first round, 65 players registered victories.

Among the 26 International Masters in the fray, L. R. Srihari was the only one to drop half a point. Woman Grandmaster V. Varshini and Woman International Master Parnali Dharia were among those who lost to lower-rated rivals.

Top-10 results (first round, Indians unless stated): S. S Manigandan lost to Arjun Erigaisi; Pavel Ponkratov (Rus) bt P. Bala Kannamma; Angela Franco Valencia (Col) lost to Abhijeet Gupta; Neuris Delgado Ramirez (Par) bt Soham Datar; Joydeep Dutta lost to S. P. Sethuraman; D. Gukesh bt Sudarshan Bhat; Dhruv Khosla lost to M. R. Lalith Babu; N. R. Visakh bt Akila Kavinda; Santu Mondal lost to Deepan Chakkravarthy; P. Iniyan bt Indrajeet Mahindrakar.