Bhubaneswar: Most of the top seeded players scriptedvictories in the first round of Category B in the Xth KIIT International Chess Festival, which was inaugurated here Friday.
Top state players like Rabindra Ojha, Soundarya Kumar Pradhan, Binayak Rath, Satopanth Gourav Nayak, Sunyasakta Satpathy, Narayan Swain and Nilshu Patnaik scripted convincing wins.
Rabindra defeated ET Manoj of Chhattisgarh, while Soundarya got the better of Y Sai Nikhil of Andhra Pradesh. Binayak prevailed over Tanish Sai Kavura of Andhra Pradesh and Satopanth checkmated statemate Bibek Kumar Sahoo. Sunyasakta registered a convincing victory over Sneha Paul of West Bengal and Narayan beat M Abhinav Kartik of Tamil Nadu. Nilshu scripted an emphatic win over statemate Rishabh Anand.
KIIT and KISS founder Achyuta Samanta inaugurated the seven-day meet in the presence of Arjuna awardee DV Prasad, Orissa Chess Association president Sekhar Sahu and secretary KK Sharma. More than 900 participants from 14 countries of the world including 60 GMs, WFMs and IMs are participating in the meet. The tournament has a prize purse of Rs 20,00,000.
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