The Asian Continental Chess Championship 2022 got off to a rousing start at Leela Ambience Convention Hotel in New Delhi on Wednesday. 140 players from 13 Asian countries which include 31 Grandmasters, 46 International Masters, 14 Women Grandmasters and 17 Women International Masters are participating in this nine-day-long prestigious competition to decide the Asian champion. With Asian supremacy at stake, the event also serves as qualification for the next year’s World Cup as the top four players in the Open and two players in the women’s category will secure their berth in the World cup.

On the opening day, top seeds and favourites Praggnandhaa and Tania Sachdev (pictured above, right) started their championship campaign with draws while ninth seed Abhijeet Gupta and women’s second seed Nomin Erdene Davaademberel of Mongolia lost their games to become the biggest casualties.

Turkmenistan’s Saparmyrat Atabayev forced Pragganandhaa to sign the peace treaty after 47 moves while Tania settled for a half point against Sakshi Chitlange after 26 moves after three-fold repetition. Gupta suffered a shock defeat by the hand of Amartuvshin Ganzorig of Mongolia while Liya Kurmangaliyeva got the better of Davaademberel.

In other upsets of the day, untitled Sanket Chakravarthy (pictured above, ) outwitted GM Arjun Kalyan while Sharan Rao beat Grandmaster Deep Sengupta. S Nitin and Moksh Amit Doshi held Kazakh Grandmaster Rinat Jumabayev and fifth seed Aryan Chopra respectively in the first round.

Photo: Shahid Ahmed & Aditya Sur Roy

Regulations for Asian Continental Chess Championship (pdf)

Official website: delhichess.com