Viswanathan Anand and Harika Dronavalli give India strong start at Isle of Man International

Viswanathan Anand and Harika Dronavalli give India strong start at Isle of Man International

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India started the Isle of Man International Tournament positively with Viswanathan Anand and H Dronavalli advancing to the next round with comfortable wins over Marc Esserman and Oyama Akito respectively. The tournament features some of the best players including World Champion Magnus Carlsen.

Anand left behind his disappointing elimination from the FIDE World Chess Cup, earlier this month, by registering a convincing win over his American opponent Marc Esserman. The five-time World Champion was playing with white pieces and remained domineering right from the first move, which helped him finish things off in just 46 moves. He will play Germany’s Lampert Jonas in the second round. 

In the other game, Grand Master Harika Dronavalli showed the door to the Englishman Oyama Akito quite early in the tournament with an emphatic win. The World No. 10, like Anand, also started from an advantageous position with white and was quite aggressive against her opponent. Despite young Akito posing a determined fight, he was always the second best with Harika making breakthroughs right from the initial phases. In the end, the girl from Gorantla registered a comfortable win and will now face German FIDE Master Babar Michael in the next round.

The Isle of Man International Chess Tournament brings together the best of the players of the chess fraternity and could see the likes of Magnus Carlsen, Caruana Fabiano, Nakamura Hikaru, and Short Nigel D, among others in the advanced rounds. India also have the likes of SP Sethuraman, Vidit Santosh Gujrathi, Adhiban B and Vaishali R taking part in the top-flight tournament and the team would hope to keep the results consistent.

The Open tournament has a time control of 100 minutes for 40 moves, which is followed by 50 minutes for 20 moves, then 15 minutes for the remaining moves with a 30-seconds added per move from the start.

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