Adhiban scores upset victory over Ragger

Grandmaster B Adhiban got off to a flier beating higher seed Markus Ragger of Austria in the first round of the ‘A’ group of Aeroflot international chess tournament.

Adhiban was a class act with his white pieces as he went for his trusted variation in the Slav defense and cruised home in a tactical battle against Ragger, who is around 100 points more in Elo rating.
It turned out to be a mixed start for the higher ranked Indians in one of the strongest open tournaments of the world.

National Champion Abhijeet Gupta also scored a fine technical win against Russian Grandmaster Aleksei Pridorozhni while Parimajan Negi and Krishnan Sasikiran were held by lower ranked opponents -- Daniel Alsina Leal of Spain and Yaroslav Zherebukh of Ukraine.

GN Gopal went down fighting against Sergei Zhigalko of Belarus while similar fates were in store for final GM norm aspirant M R Venkatesh and M Shyam Sundar.

On the brighter side, Vidit Gujrathi came out with sound positional chess to hold former world champion Alexander Khalifman of Russia to a creditable draw, while S P Sethuraman also did well to hold Ildar Khairullin of Russia.