Nihal Sarin starts Riga chess event with two wins

Mumbai, Aug 10 Top Indian Grandmaster Nihal Sarin started the Riga Tech University Open Chess Championship in Riga, Latvia, with successive wins as the Indian contingent had mixed results in the 150-player field of the classic chess event.

SP Sethuraman was stunned by a lower rated player in the first round and recovered to register a facile win in the second. Aravindh Chithambram (264i) won his one and drew the second game while SL Narayanan and Abhimanyu Puranik, who won the Rapid title couple of days back, both registered two wins each in the championship.

The 17-year-old Nihal, ranked fifth in the country and at 2655 is the highest-ranked Indian player in this event, defeated Dudin Gleb of Russia in the second round on Tuesday, after outplaying another lower-rated player, Trisha Kanyamarala, in the first round. He had two points from two rounds.

SL Narayanan, Arjun Erigaisi, Abhimanyu Puranik, Visakh NR, Raja Harshit, Raja Rithvik R, Vignesh NR and Varshini V also started with two wins in the first two rounds.

Former national champion Aravindh Chithambaram and Kalyan Arjun were on one-and-half points with one win and one draw. Praggnanandhaa R (2605) and Aditya Mittal too were on one and half points as were Murali Karthikeyan and D Gukesh, India's youngest Grandmaster.

Another former national champion Sethuraman lost to Salna Aleksandras of Lithuania in the first round but came back to beat Sohum Lohia of England to open his account in the nine-round Swiss League event.

The event in Riga is one of the top open events being conducted in the world after the Covid-19 pandemic and has thus received lot of interest from the Indian players.