Today was the single double round for the Thailand Open Championship 2015 which overnight increased to 194 players and with the Challengers with 105 participants starting has created a new record number of entries but 299 is just one short of the targeted 300!
In many respects the first three rounds set the pace for the rest of the nine round event and top seeds GM Wang Hao, GM Francisco Vallejo Pons, GM Nigel Short, GM Jan Gustafsson and a perhaps fortunate GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly are still amongst the 10 leaders with a 3/3 perfect score and very happy to have reached this stage unscathed.
They are also joined by GM Jozsef Horvath, GM Oliver Barbosa, GM Deepan Chakkravarthy, Ritviz Parab and IM Palit Somak.
Dusit Thani Pattaya – the lagoon at sunset
While round one went relatively smoothly for the professionals with just a draw given away by GM Dragun Kamil even if at one point GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly looked lost, it was, unsurprisingly, the morning second round that was full of upsets.
As GM Ian Rogers had already said to me at breakfast, Australia is currently enjoying a generation of young talented players and the practically unknown Jack Puccini was to then absolutely make his point with a quick win over GM John Paul Gomez and equally comprehensively beaten was Allan Stig Rasmussen by confident Indian Hemant Sharma.
GM’s Darwin Laylo and Eugene Torre also conceded draws to much lower rated opponents while the highly rated IM Max Illingworth who is looking to get his GM title lost to young Indian talent WFM R Vaishali.
In the third, afternoon, round, there were no major upsets, with only GMs Bartosz Socko, Abhijit Kunte and Gerhard Schebler unable to win and join the leaders.
Report by Peter Long