<p>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.<br /><br /></p>.<p>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.<br />It turned out to be a mixed start for the higher ranked Indians in one of the strongest open tournaments of the world.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.</p>
<p>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.<br /><br /></p>.<p>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.<br />It turned out to be a mixed start for the higher ranked Indians in one of the strongest open tournaments of the world.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.</p>