New Delhi (27 Oct 2022) :- The Asian Continental Chess Championship 2022 got off to a rousing start here at Leela Ambience Convention Hotel on Wednesday. Participating are 140 players from 13 Asian countries including 31 Grandmasters, 46 International Masters, 14 Women Grandmasters and 17 Women International Masters. Visit chess-results.com.
Apart from Asian supremacy, the event serves as qualification for the next year’s World Cup as the top four players in the Open and two players in the women’s category will secure their berth in the cycle.
On the opening day, top seeds and favourites Praggnandhaa and Tania Sachdev started their championship campaign with draws while ninth seed Abhijeet Gupta and women’s second seed Nomin Erdene Davaademberel of Mongolia suffered shock defeats to be the biggest casualties.
Turkmenistan’s Saparmyrat Atabayev (above left) forced Pragganandhaa to sign the peace treaty after 47 moves.
Tania Sachdev (above right) settled for half point against Sakshi Chitlange after 26 moves that ended with three-fold repetition of moves.
Gupta suffered a shock defeat at the hands of Amartuvshin Ganzorig of Mongolia while Liya Kurmangaliyeva got the better of Davaademberel.
In other upsets of the day, untitled Sanket Chakravarthy (above) outwitted Grandmaster Arjun Kalyan while Sharan Rao (be;pw) outwitted Grandmaster Deep Sengupta.
S Nitin (above) and Moksh Amit Doshi (below) held Kazakh Grandmaster Rinat Jumabayev and fifth seed Aryan Chopra respectively in the first round.
Photos by Shahid Ahmed & Aditya Sur Roy