World Rapid Chess Championship: Erigaisi holds Carlsen, shares lead; Humpy joint second

In the earlier rounds, Arjun defeated Nderim Saraci (Kosovo), Raunak Sadhwani, Vahap Sanal (Turkey) and second seed Richard Rapport (Romania).

FILE PHOTO: Arjun Erigaisi.

Arjun Erigaisi signed off his brilliant day’s work with a comfortable 44-move draw against favourite and fellow-leader Magnus Carlsen to be part of a four-player leaders’ group after five rounds of the World rapid chess championship in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Monday.

The other two leaders at 4.5 points are Vladislav Fedoseev (FIDE) and Jorden van Foreest (Netherlands).

In the earlier rounds, Arjun defeated Nderim Saraci (Kosovo), Raunak Sadhwani, Vahap Sanal (Turkey) and second seed Richard Rapport (Romania).

Nihal Sarin (4), too, was brilliant during his unbeaten run. He defeated Alisher Suleymenov (Kazakhstan), Alexei Fedorov (FIDE), Giga Quparadze (Georgia) and drew with Fedoseev and Yu Yangyi (China) to stay within striking distance of the leaders.

Vidit Gujrathi, Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Abhimanyu Puranik, Aravindh Chithambaram, S. L. Narayanan, Sankalp Gupta, Raunak Sadhwani (3 each), P. Harikrishna, B. Adhiban (2.5 each),V. Pranav, Harsha Bharathakoti (2 each), Arjun Kalyan and N. Srinath (1.5 each) are the other Indians in the fray.

For each game, a player gets 15 minutes and a 10-second increment for every completed move.

After four rounds in the women’s section, K. Humpy (3.5 points) shared the second spot with four others behind 17th seed Valentina Gunina (4).

Humpy defeated Enkhtuul Altan-Ulzii (Mongolia), Mariam Mkrtchyan (Armenia), drew with Meruert Kamalidenova and overpowered Gong Qianyun (Singapore).

With seven rounds to go, D. Harika (2.5 points, 32nd place), B. Savitha Shri (2.5 points, 33rd), Padmini Rout (2 points, 43rd) and Tania Sachdev (2 points, 59th) have their tasks cut out.