Unheralded Santosh Kumar Sinha of Gujarat held sixth seed Grandmaster S L Narayanan to a creditable draw in the opening round of the 15th edition of Delhi International Open Chess Tournament here today.
Maharashtra youngster Soham Datar also started the tournament on a positive note as he held Grandmaster Marat Dzhumaev of Uzbekistan. Jitendra Kumar Choudhary of Delhi also held Grandmaster Hesham Abdelrahman of Egypt as Indian proved a solid match to the foreign grandmasters.
There were numerous instances of lower-rated Indian youngsters holding their higher-rated counterparts as Priyanka Nutakki held Women Grandmaster Toma Katarzyna of Poland while Rakshita Ravi and Sambit Panda held seasoned International Masters Atanu Lahiri and Anup Deshmukh respectively.
A total number of 258 players from 23 countries, which include 24 Grandmasters, 22 International Masters are taking part in the premier section while in the Category 'B' for the players below 1999 international rating which is underway simultaneously with the premier section attracted a total number of 638 players.
The third category for the players below 1599 elo rating will start on Friday and this section already crossed the barrier 800 and entries are pouring day by day.
Earlier, in the opening ceremony, Manish Sisodia, Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, formally inaugurated the tournament by making the customary first move.
In the opening ceremony, Bharat Singh made a surprise announcment saying that the next edition will be held with a record prize fund of Rs. 77,77,777 in 2018.
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