Indian grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa got off to a flier and crashed through the defenses of Dutch GM Anish Giri in the first round of the Candidates chess tournament here on Sunday. On a very eventful first day of the tournament, World Cup champion Javokhir Sindarov used his excellent tactical skill to turn the tables on Russian Andrey Esipenko, while pre-event favourite Fabiano Caruana of the United States was close to a victory over fellow American Hikaru Nakamura.

The other game of the eight-player double round-robin tournament is between Matthias Bluebaum of Germany and Wei Yi of China. In the women's section being played simultaneously, Indian grandmaster and world women's cup champion Divya Deshmukh drew with last-minute replacement Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine and R Vaishali survived some anxious moments before splitting the point with Bibisara Assaubayeva of Kazakhstan.