Krishnan Sasikiran starts with a loss

CHENNAI: Krishnan Sasikiran had a terrible start to his campaign in the ACP Golden Classic chess tournament in Amsterdam on Saturday. The Indian Grandmaster went down to the only lady contestant Anna Muzychuk of Slovenia in the first round in a game that was replete with tactical shots.
In the other games in the first round, top seed Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine and second seed Gata Kamsky of US posted convincing wins against Baadur Jobava of Georgia and Liem Le Quang of Vietnam respectively.
Sasi faced the Slav defence from the Slovenian lady, who played aggressively. The Indian GM had concerns on the kingside as he had his pieces jammed in the backrank. Both the players got into minor time pressure but Muzychuk came out of it with flying colours. She came up with a bishop sacrifice for two pawns and it opened up white’s already weak kingside. Later, she found a good sequence to exchange the queens and in the process also won back the piece. Sitting pretty with two extra pawns, the Slovenian created a passed pawn on the queenside and won the point on move 40.
Ivanchuk beat Jobava in 34 moves of Reti Opening. The Ukrainian broke open black’s kingside and combined his queen and rooks to find a decisive attack. Kamsky employed the English opening against Liem Le Quang and won in 36 moves. The American won a pawn on move 27 and a second pawn six moves later but he did not stop there. Faced with further loss of material or mate, Quang resigned.