On a day when some of India’s top grandmasters, like world champion D Gukesh, Pragnanandhaa and Vidit Gujrathi, were withdrawn for the FIDE World Cup, junior world champion Pranav V ousted Aryan Tarre, who is currently the Norwegian master who is ranked third on the FIDE rankings list.
Although there is not a huge difference between their ratings, Tarry recently finished in second place behind world No. 3 Fabiano Caruana. Of the 17 Indians who played in the first match of the second round of the World Cup, 13 of them drew.
Of the four Indians who played decisive games on Tuesday, Arjun Erejesi claimed a comprehensive victory over Martin Petrov, forcing the Bulgarian to resign in just 37 moves after a series of errors from Petrov, leaving him with a knight and one less pawn on the board when he decided to wave the white flag of surrender.
Jokic and Prague tied
Gokisch, who plays for Kazybek Nogrebek from Kazakhstan and Prague, tied with Timur Kuybokarov from Australia. Both will return to the board on Wednesday with black pieces, hoping to pick up wins and avoid having to fight their way through the playoffs.
The Gujarati, in particular, was lucky to come out with a draw in the match against Faustino Oro, the 12-year-old nicknamed ‘Chess Messi’, who is bidding for the title of the world’s youngest grandmaster after taking his first GM standard and crossing the 2500 rating threshold at the Legends & Prodigies tournament in Madrid two months ago.
Playing with white pieces, the 31-year-old Indian was on a tough time crunch after using a clock on his first 12 moves, meaning he needed to make 28 moves in just half an hour.
But the match instead ended in a 28-move draw, making tomorrow’s second match a slugfest with the Indian getting white pieces.
Story continues below this ad
In other important results of the first match on Tuesday, grandmaster Diptyan Ghosh was able to draw a draw against Russian general manager Ian Nepomniatchi, who has had two world championship fights in his career.
Meanwhile, Aruniyak Ghosh, the only Indian international professor left standing, was beaten by Armenian-born American professor Levon Aronian.
© Indian Express Private Limited
(Tags translation)Gukesh
