Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa played out an easy draw with American counterpart Samuel Sevian in the first round of the Sinquefield Cup, the penultimate event of the Grand chess tour, that got underway here. The event this year saw top seed Fabiano Caruana emerge as early leader in the 10-player 9-rounds event as he put it across Jorden Van Foreest of Holland to open his account with a victory while the remaining games ended in draws.

World championship contender Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan split the point with Armenian turned American Levon Aronian while Vincent Keymer of Germany could not get past Wesley So of United States. Anish Giri of Holland also drew with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave France. For Praggnanandhaa it turned out to be a decent start as he gave nothing away as black against Sevian with the black pieces.