D. Gukesh and seven other Indians made a winning start to their campaigns in the $60,000 Sharjah Masters chess tournament on Saturday.
In the 80-player field, 27 players won their first-round matches but second seeded Armenian Gabriel Sargissian lost to Spain’s Daniil Yuffa while top seed Vladimir Fedoseev, fourth seed Arjun Erigaisi and seventh seed S. L. Narayanan were held to draws.
Raunak Sadhwani, B. Adhiban, S. P. Sethuraman, Aryan Chopra, Abhimanyu Puranik, Aravindh Chithambaram and Abhijeet Gupta won their opening games. Nihal Sarin, seeded 14, was also among those who dropped half a point.