Chess World Cup: Ganguly, Pranav win, Divya loses
Indian chess players, including junior world champion Pranav V, secured wins on the first day of the Chess World Cup in Panaji.
Mumbai: Recently crowned junior world chess champion Pranav V and seasoned grandmaster Surya Shekhar Ganguly began their campaign at the Chess World Cup in Panaji with wins, on the first day of Round 1 on Saturday.
Iniyan Pa and Pranesh M also managed to pick up wins. Crucially, all the four Indian winners on the day were playing white pieces and will begin Sunday’s matches with black pieces.
Pranav V, who in March became the first Indian since Abhijeet Gupta in 2008 to become Under-20 world champion, beat Algeria’s Boulrens Ala Eddine, while Ganguly beat Azerbaijan’s Ahmad Ahmadzada.
Pa beat Cuba’s Berdayes Ason Dylan Isidro and Pranesh beat Kazakhstan’s Satbek Akhmedinov.
Another Indian who was playing with white pieces was wild card Divya Deshmukh. The 19-year-old from Nagpur had won the women’s World Cup in July, but was dealt a blow in the Goa capital with a loss to Greece’s Kourkoulos-Arditis Stamatis. She will have a chance to try and take the round into the tiebreaker, but will need to win tomorrow’s match with black pieces.
Local player Leon Luke Mendonca, also playing with white pieces, drew with China’s Wang Shixu.
Lalit Babu MR, Karthik Venkataraman, Diptayan Ghosh, Raja Rithvik R and Raunak Sadhwani were all held to draws. Sadhwani, like Mendonca, was playing with white pieces.
Playing with black, Neelash Saha, Harshvardhan GB, Gusain Himal and Aronyak Ghosh all lost their opening matches.
The top 50 players competing in the 206-strong competition were handed a bye into the second round. This includes the top three seeds, D Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi and R Praggnanandhaa. The other Indians to receive a bye are Vidit Gujrathi, Arvindh Chithambaram, Nihal Sarin, Pentala Harikrishna and Karthikeyan Murali.
Viswanathan Anand had won the first-two editions of the Chess World Cup, in 2000 and 2002. Since 2005 however, the tournament started to use a knockout format and Praggnanandhaa has been the only Indian to make it to the final, at the previous edition in 2023, losing to world No.1 Magnus Carlsen.
