Harikrishna, Tania shocked in continental opener

Subic Bay: Grandmaster P Harikrishna and woman Grandmaster Tania Sachdev`s campaign started on a disappointing note as both suffered shock opening round defeats in the ninth Asian Continental Chess Championship.

Fifth seed Harikrishna was outdone in a Slav Exchange game in which China`s Lou Yiping remained calm and went for the exchange variation. Harikrishna could have equalised but went for an erroneous plan in a complicated position and ended up on the losing side. In the women`s section, third seed Tania Sachdev also crashed to a defeat against lower ranked Chinese Jue Wang on a mixed day for the Indian contingent. Tania misplayed a clear better position out of a closed Ruy Lopez and it was a shock for her to find in the postmortem that she missed out on a win on a few occasions before blundering away in the endgame. Grandmaster K Sasikiran proved much stronger than International Master Oliver Dimakling of Philippines who could not handle the middle game well from a Queen pawn opening. The game was a methodical squeeze by second seed Sasikiran who started his campaign on a positive note.Padmini Rout, who has opted to participate in the strong open section, too got off to a flier with a brilliant victory over Dzhurabek Khamrakulov of Uzbekistan. Playing the black side of a Sicilian Alapin, Padmini showcased her growing positional chess and won a pawn with emphatic technique. The Uzbek tried hard to salvage a difficult situation but Padmini was merciless on her day. Former world junior champion Abhijeet Gupta scored an easy victory over Wang Li of China. Playing the white side of a Queen`s gambit accepted, Abhijeet played precise moves in the middle game to win a rook for Bishop and it was a matter of technique once the Indian had extra material.Among other Indians in the fray in the open section, S P Sethuraman was among the first to score a full point at the expense of local hopeful Rhobel Legaspi while National Champion B Adhiban and Tejas Bakre were held to draws by lesser known opponents. Grandmaster Neelotpal Das scored over Joseph Galindo of Philippines but D Harika went down fighting against lower ranked local player Allan Macala. In the women`s section, Kiran Manisha Mohanty brought cheers to the camp by holding top seed Ju Wenjun to a fairly easy draw. Facing the Sicilian Najdorf, Kiran was in control in the Poisoned pawn variation and kept black`s forces at bay with exchanges at regular intervals. PTI