INQUIRER Sports

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA---DEFENDING champion Grandmaster Yury Shulman flashed his old deadly form in beating Filipino International Master Enrico ?Ikong? Sevillano at the start of the 2009 US Open Chess Championship Friday in Missouri, USA.

Shulman playing with white, tore the Benoni defense of the Cebuano Sevillano, who is eyeing to follow the footstep of newly-installed GM Joseph Sanchez who is also from Cebu.

Sevillano was the first Filipino to qualify for the US Championship after winning the US Open last year. He also won the Asian junior crown in 1986 and took part in the 1992 Manila Olympiad before immigrating to the US.

Other notable opening winners were GMs Gata Kamsky, Hikaru Nakamura, Julio Becerra, Varuzhan Akobian, Jaan Ehlvest and Melikset Khachiyan.

Kamsky nipped GM Ildar Ibragimov; Nakamura defeated GM Alexander Shabalov; Becerra nipped IM Ray Robson; Akobian walloped IM Ana Zatonskih; Ehlvest clobbered IM Michael Brooks and Khachiyan beat Charles Lawton.

Favorite's GMs Larry Christiansen and Boris Gulko were not as fortunate. Christiansen bowed to IM Robert Hess while Gulko lost to Tyler Hughes.

In other matches, Joshua Friedel halved the point with fellow GM Alexander Onischuk, GM Gregory Kaidanov split the point with IM Irina Krush and GM Joel Benjamin settled for a draw with IM Samuel Shankland. /Correspondent MARLON BERNARDINO