IM Sugar Gan-Erdene (photo above) of Mongolia upset top seed GM Parham Maghsoodloo to share early lead with 8 others at 2 points each in as many rounds of the Asian Continental Hybrid Chess Championship on Tornelo. Watch gmes live in chessbomb, chess.com, followchess, chess24 and chessbase. Visit chess-results.com to download games and for round by round results and standings.
Tied for the lead at 2 points each are FM Jagadeesh Siddharth of Singapore, GMs Lu Shanglei and Xu Yinglun of China, Nodirbek Yakubboev and Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan, GM Ehsan Ghaem Maghami of Iran and Sumiya Bilguun and Urtnasa Nasanjargal of Mongolia
Gan-Erdene crushed the Sicilian Defense of Maghsoodloo in 33 moves. Maghsoodloo tried to release the tension with 32… d5 (see diagram below) and was clearly surprised by the Mongolian’s response of 33.Rxf6! and the Iranian GM lost on time.
Actually two other Iranians lost their second round games as well, namely GM Aryan Gholami and Orini Mahdi Gholami. The five Iranians play at the Iran Chess Federation building which lost electricity for two hours. Although they continued to play with laptop batteries and mobile hotspot, the distraction and stress took their toll.
Games are scheduled 10am daily (UAE time). Eighty two players are competing in the 9-round Swiss System tournament. At stake are seven qualification slots to the FIDE World Cup July in Sochi, Russia and $16,000 in cash prizes.