Commonwealth Chess Championship | PS Krishnan downs Narayanan as 17 players share lead

Second-seeded Narayanan was amongst the biggest casualty of the long list in the second round of the tournament on Sunday as he resigned on the brink of getting checkmated in 45 moves by Krishnan. However, crowd favourite Abhijeet Gupta survived the scare.

The female seeds had a horrible first round as well with the likes of 14-year-old Divya Deshmukh, Tania Sachdev, and Bhakti Kulkarni all had to settle for draws despite being up against opponents who were rated more than 500 points below them. After that, numerous men’s seeds were left embarrassed in the afternoon round.

After the busy and strange day came to an end in a series of surprise outcomes, as many as 17 players were seen sharing the lead with two points. 

Botswana’s little-known Providence Oatihotse managed to hold former champion and fourth-seeded M.R. Lalit Babu in 73 moves, which was followed by perpetual checks. Fifth-seeded Chakkravarthy continued the trend of upsets as Ajay Karthikeyan defeated him in 84 moves, while young sensation from Kerala, Jubin Jimmy defeated sixth-seeded Debashis Das, who was last year’s bronze medallist, in just 30 moves.

Eighth-seeded P. Iniyan and ninth-seeded Swayams Mishra, two Grandmasters in-waiting, saw themselves getting outplayed by rising talents L. R. Srihari and V. Varshini respectively. Among the seasoned International Masters, C. R. G. Krishna was held by G. B. Joshi while P. Shyaamnikhil split the point with Kumar Gaurav.