Former National champions Krishnan Sasikiran and B Adhiban improved their performance when required and grabbed their respective tie-break games to crash into the second round of the chess World Cup.
Adhiban encountered a much higher-rated opponent but displayed apex form to hammer Evgeny Alekseev of Russia by 5-3 to win the blitz tiebreaker. On the other side, Sasikiran overpowered Constantin Lupulescu of Romania by 2.5-1.5 to sneak past in the second rapid game to grab the round of 64.
However, it turned out to be a dooms day in office for other Indian contestant Parimarjan Negi as he lost his lead once again before succumbing to Yuri Kryvoruchko of Ukraine in the mini-match. Actually, Parimarjan lost 2-4 but prior to that he won the first rapid tiebreaker as black. Subsequently, he blew it away with white pieces in the return game.
In fact, Adhiban's victory proved to be the second biggest upset in the World cup till date after Wei Yi of China had squashed Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia. Despite ranked way below, Adhiban exhibited a lot of determination and played with his heart out to bang Alekseev, who is a member of the apex 50 club world rankings.
Remarkably, it started with the rapid tiebreaker where Adhiban drew the first blood but lost the return game. Thus the stage was set for two 10-minutes each game that concluded in draws.
