D Gukesh Turns The Tables On Anish Giri In Tata Steel Masters Opener

World Champion D Gukesh got lucky and came back from a tough position to beat Anish Giri of Holland in the first round of the Tata Steel Masters now underway. Receiving his Khel Ratna on Friday and then taking a flight to Amsterdam, Gukesh reached here barely hours before the start of the first round. That probably had its toll on the young Indian but he got into top gear when it mattered the most. The game was almost looking lost when Gukesh found moves that left Giri with some difficult choices and the Dutchman found all but the final winning move.

It was an eventful first round with three decisive games and making the most of his white pieces was P Harikrishna who crashed through the defenses of compatriot world number four Arjun Erigaisi.

Leon Luke Mendonca let a nearly won position slip out of hand as he made several errors that gave German Vincent Keymer a winning start while R Praggnanandhaa put up a stiff resistance against Nodirbek Abdusattorov to draw eventually.

The other games of the first round also ended in draws. Defending champion Wei Yi of China played out a draw with top seed Fabiano Caruana of United States, Max Warmerdam of Holland shared the point with Alexey Sarana of Serbia while another Dutchman Jorden van Foreest drew with Vladimir Fedoseev of Slovenia.

In the challengers' section R Vaishali got off to a winning start against World's youngest International Master Oro Faustino of Argentina but Divya Deshmukh went down to higher ranked Nodirbek Yakubboev of Uzbekistan.

Gukesh started off with the Catalan opening as white and went for complications at the first opportunity in the middle game by sacrificing a knight for two pawns. Giri had to find some correct moves and he parted with his rook for