The third Indian in the fray, V Saravanan was held to a draw by the lowest rated player of the tournament Nirosh D'Silva of Sri Lanka (2025) in another match.

Playing with black, Barua kicked off his campaign with a convincing win over his Bangla opponent in a miniature game. Adopting the Slav Defence, Barua faced a sharp continuation from Rakib who sacrificed a central pawn. In a tactical battle, Barua played precise moves to catch his opponent's King in the centre and forced his resignation.

Thipsay lost to the lowly-rated IM Suhrob Khamdamov (2140) of Tajikistan. Facing the Modern defence, Thipsay played the sharp `f4' variation and landed into an inferior position. In a tensemiddlegame, both sides traded mistakes and Thipsay resigned on the 32nd move when he was about to lose material.

Saravanan, playing with black pieces, equalised comfortably with a sharp variation of the Sicilian Najdorf, but an error in the early middlegame led the game into an equal ending. Saravanan built up his advantage in an ending with opposite coloured bishops, only to miss the win in time pressure. The game ended on the 50th move.

Altogether there are 22 participants with six Grandmasters and six International Masters. A complete non-participation from the East Asian countries has resulted in the total no of countries being just 12. The notable absentees in this 11-round tournament are Indonesia, Philippines, China and Syria. With less participants, the presence of considerable no of title-holders offers good chances of GM-norms and IM-norms.

India are being represented by the top three from the national championships, barua (Tisco, Calcutta), Thipsay (UBI, Mumbai) and V Saravanan (BharatPetroleum, Madras).

In other matches of the day, the top seed Dao Thien Hai (2580) of Vietnam was held to a draw by Kerim A Liev (2385) of Turkmenistan while the other seeds who won their games included GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Uzbekistan), GM Al-Modiahki (Qatar), GM Zagrebelny (Uzbekistan) and GM Mikhail Saltaev.