Abhijit Kunte's campaign ends

By Rakesh Rao

NEW DELHI, NOV. 29. Abhijit Kunte's run ended the way it was anticipated. After holding the fancied Brazilian Gilberto Milos in the classical version for the last two days, Kunte's resistence snapped in the second tie-breaker of the first round on Wednesday.

The defeat of Kunte, not unexpected by any standards, leaves top seed Viswanathan Anand and K. Sasikiran in the fray when the second round of the World Chess Championship begins on Thursday. Anand, with black pieces, will take on Victor Bologan and Sasikiran opens with white against a much stronger Loek Van Wely.

Kunte, not accustomed to 25-minute mini matches, managed to hold Milos in the first but in the second, in Queen's Indian, made two mistakes, both pawn-moves on the `a' and later `g' files to find Milos slam the door on him.

``I could have done better but I think, it was a bad loss,'' said Kunte, still retaining the smile that hardly seems to leave his face. ``I hardly get to play in rapid games and Milos was obviously very diffcult to beat.''

On day when Milos was joined by 14 others in the second round, promising 17-year-old French, Etienni Barcot scored two impressive wins against higher seeded Estonian Mikhail Rytshagov.

The results (Round One, tie-breaker): Bartlomiej Macieja (Pol, 2536) 1.5 bt Jonathan Speelman (Eng, 2623) 0.5; Sergey Volkov (Rus, 2554) 1 bt Konstantin Sakaev (Rus, 2627) 1; Christopher Lutz (Ger, 2595) bt Ehsan Ghaem Maghami (Ira, 2488) 2.5-1.5; Etienni Barcot (Fra 2613) bt Mikhail Rytshagov (Est, 2627) 2-0; Gilberto Milos (Bra, 2633) bt Abhijit Kunte (Ind, 2556) 1.5-0.5; Pavel Tregubov (Rus, 2620) 1 drew with Alexander Rustemov (Rus, 2534) 1; Jaan Ehlvest (Est, 2627) bt Jesus Noguieras (Cub, 2552) 3-1; Viorel Iordachescu (Mda, 2594) bt Michele Godena (Ita, 2485) 1.5-0.5; Alexander Grischuk (Rus, 2606) bt Darcy Lima (Bra, 2525) 1.5-0.5; Artashes Minasian (Arm, 2595) bt Bong Villamayor (Phi, 2495) 2-0; Emir Dizdarevic (Bah, 2527) bt Lev Psakhais (Isr 2529) 3-2; Jeroen Piket (Ned, 2649) bt Gilberto Hernandez (Mex, 2572) 1.5-0.5; Alexej Alexandrov (Blr, 2591) bt Fouad El-Taher (Egy, 2485) 3.5-2.5; Vladimir Baklan (Ukr, 2599) bt Ivan Zaja (Cro, 2513) 2.5-1.5; Boris Gulko (US, 2643) bt Alexei Bezgodov (Rus, 2557) 1.5-0.5.

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