At the Sunway Sitges Chess Festival 2018, the second seed is GM Vassily Ivanchuk (2717). In the first round Ivanchuk was facing the young talent from Hyderabad Sreeshwan Maralakshikari (2244) | Photo: RupaI Mullick
Sreeshwan is just 12 years old and born in 2006 | Photo: Sagar Shah
Ivanchuk, with a rating advantage of nearly 500 Elo points, was clearly the favourite. Sreeshwan speaking to ChessBase India after the game said, "I thought I could draw the game against the former World Blitz Champion, but I didn't think I could beat him!" Well, the young boy did beat Ivanchuk and he did it in style. His pieces were all around Vassily's king and on the 26th move, Ivanchuk had to stretch out his hand in resignation. So let's have a look at how the game transpired:
The game opened with 1.d4 and Ivanchuk replied with 1...c5. We soon transposed into a Benoni.
It speaks volumes about the young boy's courage that he was not afraid to go for the most aggressive system against the Benoni with f4
The critical moment in the game came when Sreeshwan played his pawn to e5, opening up his bishop on c2 to attack the g6 pawn. At the same time the bishop on d4 is hanging. The right move here for Black was to take on c3 with his bishop and then get his knight to e5. However, Ivachuk erred big time. He took the pawn on e5 with his bishop and in came a striking blow!
Sreeshwan didn't have to be asked twice! He picked up the pawn on g6 with his bishop
Sreeshwan shunned a repetition with Qf7-h5 and got his bishop to g5, which was a killer blow.
The final nail in the coffin was the rook coming to f4 and delivering a checkmate via h4. Ivanchuk could do nothing better than to resign the game!
This was by far the biggest victory in Sreeshwan's chess career till date
Interview by ChessBase India's Rupali Mullick after Sreeshwan beat Ivanchuk
Know Sreeshwan Maralakshikari better:
This interview was done in July 2018 when Sreeshwan had just become the under-12 Commonwealth champion
Round 1 results of Sunway Sitges 2018:
| Bo. | No. | Name | Rtg | Pts. | Result | Pts. | Name | Rtg | No. | ||||
| 1 | 1 | GM | Andreikin Dmitry | 2719 | 0 | 1 - 0 | 0 | Jimenez Ruano Adrian | 2245 | 89 | |||
| 2 | 90 | Sreeshwan Maralakshikari | 2244 | 0 | 1 - 0 | 0 | GM | Ivanchuk Vassily | 2717 | 2 | |||
| 3 | 3 | GM | Inarkiev Ernesto | 2693 | 0 | 1 - 0 | 0 | Blasco Coll Andreu | 2240 | 91 | |||
| 4 | 92 | AGM | Siddharth Jagadeesh | 2240 | 0 | 0 - 1 | 0 | GM | Sasikiran Krishnan | 2673 | 4 | ||
| 5 | 5 | GM | Edouard Romain | 2644 | 0 | 1 - 0 | 0 | FM | Garcia Trobat Francisco | 2239 | 93 | ||
| 6 | 94 | IM | Blechzin Igor | 2237 | 0 | 0 - 1 | 0 | GM | Vocaturo Daniele | 2629 | 6 | ||
| 7 | 7 | GM | Adly Ahmed | 2626 | 0 | 1 - 0 | 0 | CM | Bharath Subramaniyam H | 2234 | 95 | ||
| 8 | 96 | Moksh Amit Doshi | 2233 | 0 | 0 - 1 | 0 | GM | Indjic Aleksandar | 2620 | 8 | |||
| 9 | 9 | GM | Lagarde Maxime | 2616 | 0 | 1 - 0 | 0 | FM | Sande Edreira Jose Antonio | 2230 | 97 | ||
| 10 | 98 | FM | Martinez Lopez Ivan | 2228 | 0 | 0 - 1 | 0 | GM | Gordievsky Dmitry | 2614 | 10 | ||
| 11 | 11 | GM | Romanov Evgeny | 2614 | 0 | 1 - 0 | 0 | Real Thibault | 2220 | 99 | |||
| 12 | 100 | Sorensen Hampus | 2219 | 0 | 0 - 1 | 0 | GM | Liang Awonder | 2589 | 12 | |||
| 13 | 13 | GM | Peralta Fernando | 2584 | 0 | 1 - 0 | 0 | FM | Kholopov Alexander A. | 2210 | 101 | ||
| 14 | 103 | CM | Fernandez De Bobadilla Gabriel | 2196 | 0 | 0 - 1 | 0 | GM | Santos Latasa Jaime | 2584 | 14 | ||
| 15 | 15 | GM | Lopez Martinez Josep Manuel | 2580 | 0 | 1 - 0 | 0 | IM | Gluckman David | 2192 | 104 | ||
