Grandmaster and Women’s World Cup champion Divya Deshmukh
Credit: PTI Photo
Once again it was a day of mixed fortunes as six Indians, Pranav Anand, the reigning World Junior Champion, Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Raunak Sadhwani, Kartik Venkatraman, Iniyan Pa, and Pranesh M advanced to the second round of the FIDE World Cup 2025 at Resort Rio in Goa.
Aronyak Ghosh, Raja Ritvik, Diptayan Ghosh, Lalith Babu M R, S L Narayanan will fight it out in the tie-breaks on Monday with an eye on the second round which starts Tuesday.
In the most sensational upset of the day, 19-year-old local lad, GM Leon Luke Mendonca, was knocked out of the event by lower rated IM Shixu Wang B of China. Reigning Women’s World Cup winner Divya Deshmukh was also eliminated by higher rated GM Stamatis Kourkoulos of Greece. Divya smarting from a loss on Saturday, did put up a valiant fight but Stamatis, with solid play, picked up the point after 76 moves of a Pirc defence game.
Neelash Saha, Himal Gusain, Harshvardhan GB were the other Indians who were eliminated. If it can be recalled India had started with 16 players in the first round and eight more are directly seeded into Round 2.
Pranav and Ganguly were easily the pick of the Indian players, notching two successive victories. IM Ghosh was the only Indian to score an upset victory against higher ranked GM Mateusz Bartel of Poland after losing to him in the first game on Saturday.
14-year-old Erdogmus Yagiz Kaan also blanked out his opponent 2-0 on a day when maximum higher rated players prevailed. Vassily Ivanchuk, Michael Adams, Etienne Bacrot, Maxstein Rodshtein were some of the prominent players who breezed through.
Ganguly advanced with a 2-0 score against Ahmad Ahmadzada in a French Defence game lasting 28 moves. Ganguly castled on queen side and invaded through the King side where his opponent had castled. His queen and bishop set up a checkmating net
Pranav and Ala Eddine Boulrens fought it out in a Italian two knights opening. Boulrens sacrificed his queen for two rooks but an erratic rook move on the 37th turn cost him the game.