A former Tamil Nadu State champion and a budding writer, Navalgund was in his elements against the experienced Movsziszian and it was an excellent display of counter attacking chess.
For the records, it was a Reti opening wherein Navalgund equalised without much ado and went about pushing further on the queen side. Movsziszian felt the heat once black's pieces seized the initiative and the end came soon with a typical tactical blow. The game lasted 40 moves.
While it was business as usual for most of the higher seeds, Alberto David of Italy was forced to split the point against Pratik Patel. The Sicilian Alapin is known to be a peaceful opening and it lived up to its reputation.
David started with a lightly worse middle game and only managed to equalise as the pieces changed hands at regular intervals. Players reached a queen and pawns endgame soon after wherein a pawn sacrifice ensured repetition through perpetual checks.
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Highest rated Indian M R Lalith Babu played a fine game with black pieces to get the better of compatriot M Mahalakshmi while National Champion Murali Karthikeyan gave little hopes to S Jayakumar.
The 51 Lakh prize money chess festival also has parallel events running with the main International open. The 'B' Group has participation of over 600 players while the 'C' group will have over 800 players participating.
M. Mahalakshmi lost to M R Lalith Babu; Diptayan Ghosh beat Joydeep Dutta;
Pratik Patil drew with Alberto David (ITA); Murali Karthikeyan beat S. Jayakumar;
Vitaliy Bernadskiy (UKR) beat Anish Gandhi; Chilukuri Likhit lost to Vitaliy Sivuk (UKR); Gireman Ja drew with Adam Tukhaev (UKR); Spencer Masango (ZIM) lost to Vadim Malakhatko (BEL); Karen Movsziszian (ARM) lost to Niranjan Navalgund.
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