Grandmaster Abhijeet Gupta suffered a shock defeat at the hands of Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh in the second round of 13th Asian Continental chess championship here at the Sahrjah Chess Club.
It was a bad day for Abhijeet as he blew up a good position while playing black. The Indian faced the Trompovsky, got a decent middle game on board and then looked good for a second straight victory.
However, an erroneous plan led to deterioration in position quickly and Rahman was up to the task in finding the right manoeuvres to maintain a clean slate.
Meanwhile, Indian GMs G.N. Gopal and B. Adhiban joined the group of seven leaders with a perfect score. Gundavaa Bayarsaikhan of Mongolia was outdone by Adhiban with black while Gopal excelled at the expense of Mamyrbay Assad of Kazakhstan.
The results: Second round (Indians unless specified): Deep Sengupta (1.5) drew with Rustam Kasimdzhanov (UZB, 1.5); K. Sasikiran (1.5) drew with Batchuluun Tsegmed (MGL, 1.5); Vaibhav Suri (1) lost to Yu Yangyi (CHN, 2); S.S. Ganguly (1.5) drew with Wang Chen (CHN, 1.5).
Ziaur Rahman (BAN, 2) bt Abhijeet Gupta (1); Gundavaa Bayarsaikhan (MGL, 1) lost to B. Adhiban (2); Rinat Jumabayev (KAZ, 1.5) drew with Debashis Das (1.5); Idani Pouya (IRI, 1.5) drew with S.P. Sethuraman (1.5); A.R. Salem Saleh (UAE, 2) bt Abhijit Kunte (1); G.N. Gopal (2) bt Mamyrbay Assad (KAZ, 1); M.R. Lalith Babu (1) drew with Parimarjan Negi (1); Vidit Gujrathi (1.5) bt Wang Yiye (CHN, 0.5); Vishnu Prasanna (1.5) bt Gao Rui (CHN, 0.5); M. Shyam Sundar (1) bt Abdul Kader Raes (SYR, 0); Akshat Khamparia (1) bt Al-Hajiri Bader (KUW, 0).
Women: Tania Sachdev (1.5) drew with Irine Kharisma Sukandar (INA, 1.5).
Nguyen Thi Mai Hung (VIE, 1) lost to Zhansaya Abdumalik (KAZ, 2); Soumya Swaminathan (1) lost to Sarasadat Khademalsharieh (IRI, 2); Hoang Thi Bao Tram (VIE, 1.5) drew with Atousa Pourkashiyan (IRI, 1.5); Swati Ghate (1.5) drew with Gong Qianyun (SIN, 1.5); Dorsa Derakhshani (IRI, 0.5) lost to Munguntuul Batkhuyag (MGL, 1.5); Hoang Thi Nhu Y (VIE, 1.5) bt Eesha Karavade (0.5); Mary Ann Gomes (1.5) bt Dahdal Lougain (Jor, 0.5).
