World champion D Gukesh won his first match in the ongoing FIDE World Cup to enter the third round of the event after defeating Kazybek Nogerbek on Wednesday. But it was World Championship runner-up Pantala Harikrishna who pulled a rabbit out of the hat with a stunning queen sacrifice and an opening trick he had first prepared in 2016, but never used. Until Wednesday, that is. This also has the devastating effect of defeating Arseny Nesterov and entering the third round.
Among the top Indians, Pragnananda (vs. Timur Kuipukarov), Vidit Gujrathi (vs. 12-year-old Faustino Oro) and Nihal Sarin (vs. Stamatis Korkolos-Arditis) will have to battle it out in the tie-breaks tomorrow after their matches ended in draws. Arjun Erigaisi won both of his matches to enter the third round. The almost shocking upset for the Indians was Aravind Chitambaram’s defeat to his compatriot Karthik Venkataraman.
Pragnananda, who faces Timur Kuybokarov, will have to fight in a tie-break tomorrow. (Photo source: Eteri Koblashvili/FIDE)
Harikrishna’s game saw an amazing trick from the Indian to allow his queen, the strongest piece on the board, to capture the eighth move without immediate compensation. But after just four moves, Harikrishna had the upper hand. He eventually won in 29 moves.
“I don’t deny that this is definitely a big risk,” Harikrishna said. Indian ExpressPointing out that if the trick had backfired, he would have been eliminated today. “I was thinking about this opener in the morning and then suddenly this idea (opener) appeared in my files. Then I noticed that it was from 2016, so it had already been nine years since it had just been there. I had a feeling that it was worth a try but I never did it. There have been matches played in this sacrifice, especially Murali Karthikeyan played it last year. I was a bit unsure whether my opponent knew something like this. The thing about this sacrifice is that obviously the engine gets very excited for the black pieces but at a higher depth they go down (Advantage) Indeed.
Harikrishna added: “For me, I don’t know if this is my 10th or 11th World Cup. It’s a lot of fun to play against such strong players. But at the same time, I’m not really looking to stay strong and take no risks. That’s one of the reasons I decided to do this.”
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(Tags for translation) FIDE World Cup
