Local girl Supriya Joshi (ELO 1984) stole the opening day's honours as she shocked eighth seeded Grandmaster Vishnu Prasanna of Tamil Nadu (ELO 2524) in the 9th Mumbai Mayor's International Open Chess Tournament at the Mount Litera School International here.
The game, which started with C4 converted to King's Indian defense, Supriya was lagging behind initially before sacrificing her knight to divert the pieces defending the king, thus getting the decisive king side attack and won the game in 29 moves with three passed pawns.
On the top board, no. 1 seed Popov Evan (ELO 2648) of Russia got the better of Maharashtra's Sankarsha Shelke (ELO 2032).
Playing with white pieces, Shelke faced the Sicilian Defense from the top seed. On the 22nd move the Indian erred by moving his knight to protect his pawn to allow Popov to attack his king with pawns.
Popov never gave Shelke any chance of a come back and won comfortably in 52 moves.
On the fifth board, Ojas Kulkarni (ELO 2000) held Grandmaster Sandipan Chanda (ELO 2585) to a draw after 37 moves.
Results:
Open category (round-7, top 10 boards): GM Neverov
Valeriy (2478, UKR) 6 drew with GM Bernadskiy Vitaliy (2540, UKR) 6; GM Ghosh Diptayan (2570, IND) 6 bt IM Das Sayantan (2371, IND) 5; IM Saptarshi Roy (2418, IND)5.5 drew with Harikrishnan A. Ra (2259, IND) 5.5; Tarun V Kanth (1943, IND) 5 lost to IM Sangma Rahul (2306, IND) 6; Sidhant Mohapatra (2267, IND) 5.5 drew with GM Sandipan Chanda (2593, IND) 5.
CM Arjun Erigaisi (2309, IND) 5 drew with GM Alberto David (2574, ITA) 5; GM Tukhaev Adam (2516, UKR) 5.5 bt VAV Rajesh (2351, IND) 4.5; FM Rajdeep Sarkar (2298, IND) 5 drew with GM Attila Czebe (2500, HUN) 5; IM Shyaamnikhil P (2451, IND) 5 drew with WGM Bhakti Kulkarni (2281, IND) 5; Praveen Kumar (2293, IND) 4.5 lost to Akash G. (2395, IND) 5.5.
