Asian Nations Cup Rapid 2018: Silver for the girls, Men take home bronze

by Shahid Ahmed - 29/07/2018

Team India began it's campaign for Asian Nations Cup 2018 in Hamadan, Iran by winning Silver and Bronze medals in Women's and Open category respectively in the rapid section. Vaishali scored the maximum from the women's team and in the men's team, Adhiban, Sasikiran and Sethuraman, all three were the equally highest scorers for their team. In the open section, Iran Green won the gold, China won the silver and in women's category China won the gold and Iran Green won the bronze. In this report, you will find games, positions and photos of the Indian team from day 1 of Asian Nations Cup 2018. We also have games and results of round one of the Classical section. Photo: Swapnil Dhopade

Team India begin with medal winning performances

Indian Women's team: Padmini Rout, Eesha Karavade, R Vaishali and Aakanksha Hagawane along with Swapnil Dhopade (Women's team coach) and Indian Men's team: B Adhiban, K Sasikiran, Abhijeet Gupta and S P Sethuraman | Photo: Swapnil Dhopade

Asian Nations Chess Up 2018 Official Logo | Source: Official site

Adhiban unleashed beast mode in the endgame against Truong Nguyen | Photo: Swapnil Dhopade

Sasikiran broke through Idani Pouya's defence with a brilliant sacrifice in round 2 | Photo: Swapnil Dhopade

Find out how Sasikiran (White) launched a devastating attack here

Surya Sekhar Ganguly extracted his opponent Parham Maghsoodloo's king out in the open. Black to play.

Sethuraman scored valuable 3.5/5 for the team | Photo: Swapnil Dhopade

White (Sethuraman) to play. How did he finish off the game?

Abhijeet Gupta might have scored the least among his teammates but he got a crucial victory in the last round | Photo: Swapnil Dhopade

Abhijeet Gupta - Nguyen Anh Koi

Black just played 28.Rxd3. Find out how did Abhijeet finish things off?

The Indian girls have to wear the hijab in Iran| Photo: Swapnil Dhopade

Harika had a good start and scored 4.0/6 for her team | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Padmini did not have the best start as she lost three consecutive games, but she is known for making strong comebacks | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Eesha made a steady start, scoring 3.5/6 | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Vaishali played all 7 games and scored the highest for her team 5.0/7 | Photo: Amruta Mokal

Aakanksha played two games and she won them both | Photo: Supriya Bhat

Final standings in Open category

Finishing third wasn't the best result for the Indian team because we were the top seeds of the event.

Rk.	SNo	FED	Team	Team	Games	+	=	-	TB1	TB2	TB3
1	6		Iran Green	IRI	7	6	0	1	12	19,0	0
2	2		China	CHN	7	5	0	2	10	22,0	0
3	1		India	IND	7	5	0	2	10	16,5	0
4	8		Uzbekistan	UZB	7	5	0	2	10	16,0	0
5	5		Iran Red	IRI	7	4	0	3	8	18,5	0
6	4		Kazakhstan	KAZ	7	4	0	3	8	15,5	0
7	10		Iran White	IRI	7	4	0	3	8	15,0	0
8	3		Vietnam	VIE	7	3	0	4	6	15,5	0
9	9		Iraq	IRQ	7	2	1	4	5	10,0	0
10	7		Bangladesh	BAN	7	1	2	4	4	10,5	0
11	12		Oman	OMA	7	0	2	5	2	4,5	0
12	11		Lebanon	LBN	7	0	1	6	1	5,0	0

Final standings in Women's category

India started as the second seed and finished second in the women's section:

Rk.	SNo	Team	Games	+	=	-	TB1	TB2	TB3
1	7	China	7	7	0	0	14	23,5	0
2	6	India	7	4	2	1	10	17,0	0
3	4	Iran Green	7	4	1	2	9	17,0	0
4	1	Uzbekistan	7	3	1	3	7	13,5	0
5	8	Vietnam	7	2	3	2	7	13,0	0
6	5	Kazakhstan	7	3	0	4	6	14,5	0
7	2	Iran Red	7	1	1	5	3	9,5	0
8	3	Iran White	7	0	0	7	0	4,0	0

Asian Nations Cup 2018 classical format starts on 28th July 2018 and it will go on till 2nd August 2018 and Blitz will take place on 3rd August 2018.

Classical section:

India is the top seed in the open section. This is how our team looks like:

Bo.		Name	Rtg	FED	FideID	Pts.	Games
1	GM	Adhiban B.	2671	IND	5018471	0,5	1,0
2	GM	Sethuraman S.P.	2657	IND	5021596	1,0	1,0
3	GM	Sasikiran Krishnan	2666	IND	5004985	0,0	0,0
4	GM	Ganguly Surya Shekhar	2652	IND	5002150	0,0	1,0
5	GM	Gupta Abhijeet	2614	IND	5010608	0,5	1,0

With so much experience and strength, it seems like team India would be the favourites to win the event, but we have some strong competition from:

China:

Bo.		Name	Rtg	FED	FideID	Pts.	Games
1	GM	Lu Shanglei	2629	CHN	8603332	0,0	0,0
2	GM	Wen Yang	2599	CHN	8602956	0,5	1,0
3	GM	Zhou Jianchao	2621	CHN	8603537	0,5	1,0
4	GM	Bai Jinshi	2588	CHN	8602280	1,0	1,0
5	GM	Xu Xiangyu	2585	CHN	8608288	1,0	1,0

Iran:

Bo.		Name	Rtg	FED	FideID	Pts.	Games
1	GM	Maghsoodloo Parham	2636	IRI	12539929	1,0	1,0
2	GM	Idani Pouya	2583	IRI	12510130	1,0	1,0
3	GM	Tabatabaei M.Amin	2590	IRI	12521213	1,0	1,0
4	GM	Firouzja Alireza	2561	IRI	12573981	1,0	1,0
5	GM	Mosadeghpour Masoud	2531	IRI	12519278	0,0	0,0

In all 14 teams are taking part in the open section:

No.	Team	RtgAvg
1	India	2662
2	China	2609
3	Iran Green	2593
4	Kazakhstan	2536
5	Vietnam	2517
6	Iran Red	2508
7	Uzbekistan	2467
8	Iran White	2429
9	Bangladesh	2338
10	Iraq	2277
11	Syria	2211
12	Lebanon	2089
13	Oman	1952
14	Afghanistan	1697

In the first round itself team India was held to a draw by Uzbekistan:

Bo.

Uzbekistan

Rtg

India

Rtg

2 : 2

1.1

Yakubboev, Nodirbek

2512

Adhiban, B.

2671

½ - ½

1.2

Khoroshev, Nikita

2424

Sethuraman, S.P.

2657

0 - 1

1.3

Sindarov, Javokhir

2474

Ganguly, Surya Shekhar

2652

1 - 0

1.4

Abdisalimov, Abdimalik

2331

Gupta, Abhijeet

2614

½ - ½

Adhiban on board one drew his game with the black pieces. Sethu on board two provided the win and Abhijeet Gupta on board four drew his game. Young Javokhir Sindarov on board four managed to beat Surya Sekhar Ganguly | Photo: Swapnil Dhopade

Here is Sethuraman's win against Nikita Khoroshev:

The game between Surya Sekhar Ganguly and Javokhir Sindarov is incomplete. This is how the opening phase went:

Women's section:

India has Harika, Eesha and Padmini who will be playing at the Olympiad as well. But instead of Humpy and Tania, at the Asian Nations Cup we have two young girls R.Vaishali and Akanksha Hagawane.

Bo.		Name	Rtg	FED	ID	FideID	Pts.	Games
1	GM	Harika Dronavalli	2494	IND	0	5015197	0,5	1,0
2	WIM	Vaishali R	2337	IND	0	5091756	1,0	1,0
3	IM	Karavade Eesha	2390	IND	0	5012600	0,0	1,0
4	IM	Padmini Rout	2338	IND	0	5029295	0,5	1,0
5	WIM	Aakanksha Hagawane	2314	IND	0	25014510	0,0	0,0

In round one team India drew their match against Uzbekistan. Vaishali's win on board two was balanced by Eesha's loss on board three with Harika and Padmini drawing their games. A welcome change is a young coach of the women's team - 28-year-old Swapnil Dhopade.

The games were shown live for the Indian women's team in round one

Rk.	Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	TB1	TB2
1	Kazakhstan	*							4	4,0	2
2	Iran Green		*					3½		3,5	2
3	China			*			2½			2,5	2
4	Uzbekistan				*	2				2,0	1
	India				2	*				2,0	1
6	Vietnam			1½			*			1,5	0
7	Iran Red		½					*		0,5	0
8	Syria	0							*	0,0	0

A qualification spot for the world team championships 2019 is at stake here. We wish the Indian team the best in this event.