All photos by David Llada

While Sopiko Guramishvili was simply better than Sara Khadem today, Mitra Hejazipour lost a dramatic Armageddon game to Anastasia Bodnaruk when she got flagged in a winning position. Nana Dzagnidze had her back against the wall again when Mona Khaled won the first rapid match but she managed to come back and won the next three games to proceed to the second round.

Several interesting match ups await us in the second round: Seed one Jun Wenjun meets Chinese-Qatari ex-world champion Zhu Chen. The only two western European players: GM Cramling and IM Elisabeth Paehtz will cross swords tomorrow at 3 pm local time. Nino Batsiashvili got her second Georgian Derby against another Nino: Khurtsidze! If Batsiashvili wins and Melia Salome manages to stun the higher-rated ex-world champion Antonaenta Stefanova, then Batsiashvili could conceivably even see a third consecutive match against a fellow Georgian! Hopefully Nino will not protest if this happens!

Hejazipour vs Bodnaruk

Mitra Hejazipour came to this match in great spirits despite her somewhat one-sided loss in the second game of her match against Anastasia Bodnaruk. In the first game, she kept her composure and outplayed her much higher-higher rated opponent in a nice positional game.

Inches away from making history for the hosts. Mitra Hejazipour has a lot to study after this tournament

However, Bodnaruk proved to be a tough nut to crack. After every setback she rebounded with even more energy and kept the match balanced. The ping-pong between these two warriors led to the final word: the Armageddon game, in which Bodnaruk better understood the essence of the game she had to play. With the white pieces, she started to play extremely fast even at the cost of getting a worse position. Her practical approach paid off as Mitra got flagged in a nearly winning position.

Bodnaruk vs Hejazipour

Anastasia Bodnaruk's resilience paid off and she advanced to the next round

Mona Khaled vs Nana Dzagnidze

The out of form Nana Dzagnidze had another bad start today, as after she outplayed Mona Khaled out of opening, the players started to exercise a Persian norm known as Taarof by offering each other a full piece, however, at the end it was Mona who took the piece and went on to win the game.

However, when Dzagnidze levelled the match for the second time, she did not give Mona Khaled any chances and won the next two rapid games quite comfortably. If I fail to share a one of Dzagnidze's it is because I have nothing to say considering how one-sided the battles were.

Iranian fans were very happy after Sara Khadem, Iran’s No.1 by far and the host’s greatest hope for a remarkable result, managed to pull out a ‘Karpovian’ style win against Sopiko Guramishvili to equalize the match. However, on tie-break day, it was all about Sopiko as she dominated both games and Sara never got the chance to show a thing. My guess is that the pressure of playing at home and expectations exceeded Sara’s ability to cope with the distractions and she was simply not at her best.

Sopiko Guramishvili, kept her cool and outplayed her opponent. One could not expect such a great performance after a heart-breaking result in Tata Steel. Way to go Sopiko!

Here is one of Sopiko’s fine wins:

Guramishvili vs Khademalsharieh

World under-20 champion Nataliya Buska beat experienced Hoang Thrang from Hungary to advance to the second round

Things did not go Ekaterina Atalik's way today and she exits Tehran sooner than hoped

Atalik went down at the hand of Melia Salome who will face ex-world champion Antoaneta Stefanova in the next round.

Complete tiebreak results

Find more master analysis by Nihal Sarin here.

Links Official tourNament site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 14 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.