Asian Rapid Chess Championship 2026: Goutham Krishna Among Leaders

India's Goutham Krishna H shares the lead at the Asian Rapid Chess Championship 2026 in Hong Kong after five rounds, while Harika Dronavalli has 4/5.

The Asian Rapid Chess Championship 2026 is under way in Hong Kong, and after the first day a young Indian player is among the leaders. IM Goutham Krishna H, playing in the under-16 age category, has 4.5 points from 5 games, level with five grandmasters at the top of the table.

The players sharing the lead with Goutham are China's Wang Hao, Rudik Makarian, Ilia Iljiushenok, Aleksandr Rakhmanov and Aleksey Grebnev. The open section is an 11-round Swiss at 15 minutes per player plus 10 seconds per move, so six more rounds are still to come.

Goutham began with three straight wins. In round 4 he won with Black against GM Prraneeth Vuppala, a fellow Indian, in the Sicilian Defense. In round 5 he drew a long 58-move game with GM Rudik Makarian, the second seed.

In the women's championship, GM Dronavalli Harika of India is in excellent form. The top seed won her first three games and then drew with WGM Xeniya Balabayeva and GM Valentina Gunina, finishing the day with 4 points from 5.

Rapid championships move fast. With five or six games in a single day, players have very little time to recover between rounds. Strong rapid players learn to forget the previous game quickly, whether it was a win or a loss, and focus completely on the next one.

There is another lesson in Goutham's start. He beat lower-rated players in the opening rounds without dropping half a point. Many players lose points early in an event by relaxing against weaker opposition. Treat every game with the same seriousness, and you give yourself the best chance of reaching the top boards later in the event.

The second and final day of the rapid championships takes place today, followed by the blitz championships tomorrow.