Nihal Sarin and D. Gukesh scored over lower-ranked rivals while Arjun Erigaisi held sixth seeded Russian Andrey Esipenko in the opening round of the $425,000 FIDE Grand Swiss chess tournament in Riga, Latvia, on Wednesday.
In the women’s section, R. Vaishali was the lone Indian to begin her campaign with a win.
First-round results (involving Indians): Open: Arjun Erigaisi drew with Andrey Esipenko (Rus); P. Harikrishna drew with Vladislav Kovalev (FIDE); B. Adhiban drew with S.P. Sethuraman; Gabriel Sargissian (Arm) drew with R. Praggnanandhaa; Surya Shekhar Ganguly drew with Sanan Sjugirov (Rus); Raunak Sadhwani drew with Ivan Cheparinov (Bul); Nihal Sarin bt Kiril Georgiev (Mkd); D. Gukesh bt Antenaina Rakotomaharo (Mad); Miezis Normunds (Lat) drew with K. Sasikiran.
Women: D. Harika drew with Nataliya Buksa (Ukr); Padmini Rout lost to Zhu Jiner (Chn); Vantika Agarwal drew with Batkhuyag Munguntuul (Mgl); Jolanta Zawadzka (Pol) drew with Divya Deshmukh; Jesse Nikki February (RSA) lost to R. Vaishali .
