World junior champion P Harikrishna started off with a facile victory over Grandmaster Zhang Pengxiang of China in the first round of the 2nd Sanjin Hotel Cup Grandmasters chess tournament underway in Taiyuan.
After the first round of the category-15 12-player round robin event, Tigran Petrosian of Armenia and Dubai Open champion Wang Hao of China emerged as joint leader along with Harikrishna with a perfect score.
Interestingly, all the three victors of the first round had black pieces.
While Petrosian capitalised on a blunder by World's youngest ever GM, Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine, to open his account, Hao skillfully outplayed compatriot Zhoe Xue.
The other games of the first round did not have much as two of the remaining games ended in draws while the game between former Russian Champion Alexander Motylev and Ni Hua of China was postponed until the only rest day on 17th July due to the late arrival of the former.
Harikrishna played a fine positional game to outclass Pengxiang. Playing the black side of a Berlin defence, Harikrishna was surprised in the opening as Pengxiang shied away from main lines especially because the other variants in this opening are known to lead to an easy game for black.
Harikrishna expectedly got an easy game right from the early middle game stage and did not falter in launching a kingside attack with his fire-spitting Bishops.
Pengxiang chances for any counter play evaporated on move 23 when Harikrishna won a queenside pawn and in trying to recover it, the Chinese lost all control of white squares.
Harikrishna's queen dealt the final blow on move 27 and just one move later it was all over.
"I think he made some obvious mistakes in the opening giving me not only an easy game but also some straight forward plan to execute," Harikrishna said after the game.
Petrosian was trifle lucky in beating Karjakin who miscalculated and lost a piece without any compensation. It was a Pirc defense wherein Karjakin played white and could not obtain much with his white pieces.
Carrying on in a rather lacklustre fashion, the Ukrainian missed a simple queen manoeuvre after sacrificing two pieces for a rook and later got his rook trapped too to go down in just 21 moves.
Wang Hao, the surprise packet of the last Dubai open, played a spectacular game in the Slav defense to outplay former World junior girls champion Zhao Xue.
Playing the middle game energetically, the young Chinese uncorked a brilliant exchange sacrifice amidst a tactical melee and came out on top after the dust subsided.