Indian Grandmaster Arjun Erigaisi displayed vital fighting spirit to beat Serbia’s Alexandr Predke in a marathon 71-move game in the third round to register his first win of the Chennai Grand Masters 2023 tournament held at the Leela Palace, here on Sunday.
The remaining three matches in the round between Pentala Harikrishna and Pavel Eljanov, D. Gukesh and Parham Maghsoodloo, and Levon Aronian and Sanan Sjugirov all ended in draws, leaving overnight leaders Harikrishna and Sjugirov to stay on top in the eight-player round-robin tournament.
Arjun, who is fighting for a spot at the Candidates 2024, engaged in a Sicilian Defence game with white against Predke .
The 20-year-old was in his preparations till the 15th move before he took 25 minutes to take Predke’s knight on g6 with his light-squared bishop.
READ | Chennai Grand Masters 2023: Harikrishna, Sjugirov joint leaders after second round
The Serbian traded dark-squared bishops and manoeuvred his pieces precisely to establish a commanding position before playing bishop to g4 on the 26th move, which proved decisive in Arjun’s hard press.
The queens were off the board a couple of moves later and, as the clash progressed to the endgame, Predke also mistimed his pawn push at the f-file, giving Arjun a significant advantage. The Indian consolidated his position and eventually ground out Predke for a crucial win.
However, the most exciting clash of the round came was between Harikrishna and Eljanov.
In the Ruy Lopez game, Harikrishna, who played with white, managed to keep Eljanov at bay.
In an objectively equal position, Harikrishna overlooked Eljanov’s crucial a5 move, which would have prevented him from drawing the game as black would have dominated the position with two rooks and a bishop against the lone white queen.
However, Eljanvo’s miscalculated move of king to f6 instantly neutralised the position as his queen to g6 would have given him a clear advantage over the Indian.
Harikrishna found the only move to keep the deadlock — rook h6 — sacking his piece by checking black king and forcing a draw with perpetual checks — a method to force draw with never-ending checks — from the queen at a-file.
Gukesh and Maghsoodloo, both in dire need of a win to improve their Candidates’ chances, mutually decided to end the game early with an easy draw after the 30th move to reduce the risk of getting a loss at a crucial juncture of the tournament.
Sjugirov missed a massive opportunity to go in the solo lead after he failed to convert a favourable position against Aronian.
Sjugirov cramped Aronian with the white pieces and denied a draw offer at the 30th move by the latter, but under massive time trouble, the Hungarian eventually had to settle for a draw.
“I had a winning position after Levon made a blunder. At some point, it looked very good for white. Overall it’s a great start (2.0/3) but today I am not very happy with the result because I had the feeling I could win,” said Sjugirov after the match.
“He offered me a draw after playing a5 when I had 20 minutes but I decided to play for a win, but I could not find anything and after queen e5, knight e6 I think it was better for me to repeat the moves,” he added.
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