The sole female Grandmaster at the Chess World Cup, Divya Deshmukh, began her campaign with a loss to Greece’s Stamatis Kourkoulos-Arditis after running into time issues.
Deshmukh, who won the Women’s Chess World Cup earlier this year, has a chance to bounce back in Sunday’s second classical match.
Meanwhile, Grandmasters Raunak Sadhwani and S L Narayanan, India’s two best hopes, were held to draws by Daniel Barrish of South Africa and Steven Salas Rojas
of Peru. Surya Shekhar Ganguly, who has been in the World Cup before, played a fine game to beat Ahmadzada Ahmad of Azerbaijan, while Ritvik Raja did well to hold 2024 world junior champion Nogerbek Kazybek of Kazakhstan to a draw. The Indian elite, comprising World Champion D Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi, R Praggnanandhaa, P Harikrishna, Vidit Gujrathi and Nihal Sarin, have all received direct entry into the second round, which will feature 128 players. Each round will follow a knockout format, with two classical games, and in case of a tie, games of shorter duration will decide the winner.
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