Zia loses in tie-break

Grandmaster Ziaur Rahman was eliminated from the Chess World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan yesterday after losing the first round tie-break against Russian Grandmaster Evgeny Tomashevsky. Zia, the 117th seed with a rating of 2509, lost the first two boards of the tie-break, playing with white and black pieces once apiece, to concede defeat.

Zia had taken the Russian to the tie-break by drawing both the first round games on Friday and Saturday. The Bangladeshi grandmaster was eliminated from the first round of last year's world cup, too, conceding a 0.5-1.5 point defeat against Boris Gelfand of Israel.