Khanty Mansiysk: Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran scored a clinical victory over Erwin L’Ami of Holland in the first round of Rapid tie-break games to cruise into the second round of the World Chess Cup here.

Sasikiran, a 2.5-0.5 winner over L’Ami, led a pack of three Indians out of seven who made it to the second round. The other two are Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Sandipan Chanda.

Young GM Parimarjan Negi, Abhijeet Gupta, Abhijit Kunte and Sriram Jha will return home after losing their first round tie-break games.

Parimarjan lost 0.5-2.5 to Vadim Milov of Switzerland.

It turned out to be an excellent day for Sasikiran and he was relentless after drawing the first game with black pieces.

The second game saw the Indian in full swing from a Catalan opening with white pieces and it was a slow but steady progress thereon that gave Sasikiran a dangerous passed pawn in the middle game.

L’Ami tried hard to salvage a difficult position but he was never in control. Sasikiran knocked down a couple of pawns before unleashing the final blow — a picturesque finale wherein all black forces were tied down.

In the third, the pressure was too much on L’Ami and he simply crumbled. Sasikiran neutralised white’s advantage in quick time in the middle game and romped home in just 31 moves.

(PTI)