GM Abhijeet Gupta scored a hard-fought victory over B. Adhiban in the Group ‘A' second round of the Aeroflot International Open chess tournament here.
Playing black, Gupta equalised easily in the Grunfeld Defence and the correct result should have been a draw, but for an over-ambitious approach by Adhiban, who even spurned the peace proposal. After the dust settled, Gupta closed it out in 56 moves.
K. Sasikiran and Parimarjan Negi also scored their first wins. Sasikiran proved stronger than Ivan Popov of Russia with white, while Negi created an excellent counter-play to beat another Russian Sergey Grigoriants.
Vidit Gujrathi held Sandipan Chanda to a draw after an intense battle. After holding former World champion Alexander Khalifman of Russia in the first round, this was another good result for Gujrathi.
Meanwhile, M.R. Venkatesh was back in contention as he defeated Anton Shomoev of Russia. However, G.N. Gopal lost to Hrant Melkumyan of Armenia, his second in as many games.
Among other Indians, D. Harika went down to Khalifman, S.P. Sethuraman played out a draw with Rauf Mamedov of Azerbaijan, while M. Shyam Sundar opened his account after splitting the point with Croatian Alojzije Jankovic.
In Group ‘B,' GM Tejas Bakre beat Gennady Tunik of Russia, while Vaibhav Suri defeated Le Quang Long of Vietnam and Akshyaraj Kore also came in joint lead after cruising past Mikhail Mozharov of Russia. In Group ‘C,' Akash Iyer, Aravindh Chithambaram and R. Bharathi are among those who have won two games.
