Faustino Oro’s blitz brilliance: 12-year-old shocks seasoned GM to enter Round 2 | Chess News

12-year-old sensation Faustino Oro (ANI)

Panaji: The youngest debutant of the World Cup, Faustino Oro, known as the Messi of chess in Argentina, took the blitz route to secure his spot in the second round and emerged as the showstopper at the Resort Rio in Goa on Monday. The 12-year-old will be among the 78 qualifiers who will be paired with the top 50 seeds, including world champion D. Gukesh, in the second round of 128 masters. While Faustino played six long games in five hours to surprise Croatia’s 2578 Elo Grandmaster (GM) Brkic Ante 5-3, three of the five participating Indian players entered the second round as M.R. Lalit Babu and Raja Rithvik lost in the third set of tie-breaks played in the blitz format. A total of 40 players on 20 boards played the rapid and blitz tie-break games on Monday. India’s 27-year-old GMs Narayanan S. and Diptayan Ghosh were the first to qualify after they outplayed their opponents from Peru and China with an identical score of 3-1. While Narayanan made light work of lower-ranked Rojas Salas Steven, Diptayan (2573 Elo) made his pawns do all the talking as he outplayed Chinese GM Peng Xiongjian (2521 Elo) with both the coloured pieces. India’s 23-year-old IM Aronyak Ghosh joined Narayanan S. and Diptayan in the second round. Aronyak (2514 Elo) stunned higher-ranked and 40-year-old Poland GM Bartel Mateusz in game 1 of the tie-breaker. In the second outing, the Polish GM (2575 Elo) brought parity with a 35-move win and stretched their opening-round battle to the second set of tie-breaks with lesser time control. In the 10-minute rapid contest, Aronyak prevailed over Mateusz by first winning with his white pieces in 54 moves to take the lead, then laid a solid wall of defensive pieces with an attacking knight to force the Polish GM to resign in just 20 moves. Later in the day, Indian GMs Raja Rithvik and Lalit Babu stretched their higher-ranked opponents to the third set of tie-breaks played in the 5-minute blitz format, but went down fighting with an identical score of 3-5 against Kazakhstan’s GM Nogerbek Kazybek and the Netherlands’ 2582 Elo Max Warmerdam.