Kulkarni stuns Adhiban

Rakesh Kulkarni surprised fifth-seeded Grandmaster and former National champion B. Adhiban to provide the biggest upset of the opening round of Parsvnath International Open chess here on Sunday.

Tamil Nadu’s C. Praveen Kumar held sixth-seeded Uzbek Marat Dzhumaev on a day when most leading names started on a winning note.

The results (first round, Indians unless stated):

Category ‘A’: Abhijeet Gupta bt B.T. Murali Krishnan; Himal Gusain lost to Aleksej Aleksandrov (Bel); P. Magesh Chandran bt Soumya Swaminathan; Sayantan Das lost to Andrei Deviatkin (Rus); B. Adhiban lost to Rakesh Kulkarni; C. Praveen Kumar drew with Marat Dzhumaev (Uzb); M.R. Lalith Babu bt Akshat Chandra (USA); Padmini Rout lost to Lu Shanglei (Chn).

Teske Henrik (Ger) drew with Adarsh Jayakumar (USA); Utkal Ranjan Sahoo lost to Abhijit Kunte; Vaibhav Suri bt Prince Bajaj ; G.B. Joshi lost to M. Shyam Sundar; Wan Yunguo (Chn) lost to Abhishek Kelkar; Shreyans Shah lost to Czebe Attila (Hun); Vishnu Prasanna bt Pradeep Kumar; K. Praneeth Sury drew with Swapnil Dhopade.

Niaz Murshed (Ban) bt Chinmay Kulkarni; Deepak Katiyar lost to Sahaj Grover; Akshayraj Kore bt Swati Ghate; Nasir Wajih lost to Ashwin Jayaram.