Kanpur, Bengaluru-based R Parthasarathy held eleventh seed Grandmaster Sankalp Gupta of Maharashtra to a draw in the opening round of the MPL 58th Senior National Chess Championship at Ganges Club, here on Friday.

Playing with white pieces in a Ruy Lopez game, Sankalp tried hard to take a full point from hisfi rst-round outing but found Parthasarathy's defence a tough nut to crack. He was forced to split the point after 46 moves, the organisers informed in a release.

In other surprising results of the first day, Delhi youngster Harshit Pawar stunned International Master Pranav V of Tamil Nadu while Sikkim's Rohit Gurung outwitted International Master Raahul V S of Tamil Nadu.

LIC's Grandmaster Sriram Jha and International Master Dinesh Sharma were forced to split the points against lower-rated Bishal Bask of West Bengal and Md Bashiq Imrose of Telangana respectively.

As expected almost all the top seeded players posted easy victories in the opening round but top seed B Adhiban faced stiff resistance from Chandra Raju of Kerala but registered victory after a marathon match lasted 125 moves arrived out of Catalan opening.

The second round matches of this 11 round Swiss system championship sponsored by MPL Sports Foundation are in progress at the time of filing this report.

Important results (day 1)

Important Results (Round-1)
GM Adhiban of PSPB (1) beat Chandar Raju of Kerala (0); Srimanarayana AKS of Andaman & Nicobar (0) lost to GM Arjun Erigaisi of Telangana (1); GM Abhijeet Gupta of PSPB (1) beat Kumar Gaurav of Bihar (0); Vedant Nagarkatte of Maharashtra (0) lost to GM Karthikeyan Murali of PSPB (1); GM Sethuraman S P of PSPB (1) beat Rahul Soram Singh of Assam (0); CM Ebenezer Joseph of Tamil Nadu (0) lost to GM Abhimanyu Puranik of Maharashtra (1); GM Gukesh D of Tamil Nadu (1) beat Imtiaz Islam Bora of Assam (0); Joel Paul Ganta of Andhra Pradesh (0) lost to GM Aravindh Chithambaram of Tamil Nadu (1); GM Aryan Chopra of Delhi (1) beat Sumit Grover of J&K (0); Saurabh Choubey of Madhya Pradesh (0) lost to GM Lalith Babu M R of PSPB (1); GM Sankalp Gupta of Maharashtra (.5) drew with Parthasarathy R of Karnataka (.5); Sharsha Backer of Kerala (0) lost to GM Deep Sengupta of PSPB (1); GM Visakh N R of Railways (1) beat Rahul Gurung of Sikkim (0); Nilsu Pattnayak of Odisha (0) lost to GM Deepan Chakkravarthy of Railways (1); GM Iniyan P of Tamil Nadu (1) beat Ilamparathi A R of Tamil Nadu (0); Ashutosh Kumar of Bihar (0) lost to GM Mitrabha Guha of West Bengal (1); GM Arjun Kalyan of Tamil Nadu (1) beat Santanu Borpatra Gohain of Assam (0); Arnav Maheshwari of Tamil Nadu (0) lost to GM Harsha Bharathakoti of Telangana (1); GM Swapnil Dhopade of Railways (1) beat Sparsh Khandelwal of Chhattisgarh (0); Sanchay Dubey of Uttar Pradesh (0) lost to IM Aditya Mittal of Maharashtra (1); IM Pranav V of Tamil Nadu (0) lost to Harshit Pawar of Delhi (1); Anil Kumar OT of Kerala (0) lost to IM Aronyak Ghosh of West Bengal (1); IM Raahul VS of Tamil Nadu (0) lost to Rohit Gurung of Sikkim (1).