Arjun Erigaisi beat Hungary’s Sanan Sjugirov to continue his upward ascend, but it was the local boy, D. Gukesh, who stole the limelight by holding compatriot Pentala Harikrishna for a draw to win the Chennai Grand Masters 2023 tournament on tiebreaks here at the Leela Palace on Thursday.
Gukesh edged out Arjun in the race for the much-anticipated Candidates spot and improved his qualification chances after finishing on top with equal points and parity in head-to-head, but the former gained ground due to better tiebreaks. Harikrishna finished third, as all three Indians in the tournament ended the campaign with a podium finish.
Arjun ground out Sjugirov for a win to make the three-way battle for the title interesting, but his first-round loss against Harikrishna came back to haunt him as the 20-year-old made yet another second-place finish with the barest of margins.
Gukesh, who only needed a draw in the final round to win the eight-player tournament, does enough with black pieces against Harikrishna in the Queen’s Gambit Accepted game.
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Gukesh accelerated right from the start to initiate the queen’s trade by the eighth move. The 17-year-old had four extra minutes on the clock by the 10th move from where he started the game, displaying his preparedness in the line.
Gukesh agreed to trade his one knight and a bishop for a pair of white knights.
Harikrishna had a slight positional advantage over Gukesh in the middle game, but the fight was all but over once the one-set of rooks was exchanged on the 21st move.
Harikrishna’s kingside was guarded by four consecutive pawns that could have infiltrated black’s defence, but before that happened, the players agreed to shake hands.
Arjun, playing with white pieces, pressed hard in the Nimzo-Indian game.
The mid-game proved tricky to handle for the pair as both players had just a little over 25 minutes each on the clock.
Sjurigov’s array of inaccurate moves under severe time trouble cleared the path for Arjun as the current India No. 4 went on to win his third game of the tournament to finish on a high.
Unless Netherland’s Anish Giri, who has 84.3 FIDE circuit points, makes a podium finish in the World Rapid and Blitz Championship next week, Gukesh -- now with 87.3 circuit points -- has virtually sealed a spot for himself in the eight-player event in Canada.
The FIDE circuit will end with the World Rapid and Blitz Championship, scheduled to be held in Samarkand in Uzbekistan from December 25-31.
Top-seeded Parham Maghsoodloo also ended his campaign with an emphatic win. In a sharp opening choice by Maghsoodlo with black, the Iranian played his favourite Queen Gambit Declined to hand Serbia’s Alexandr Predke his fourth loss in succession in just 22 moves.
In a closely fought opening, poised for an enterprising mid-game, Predke made a massive blunder by moving his queen to b7 and was instantly forced to resign once he realised there was no way of stopping mating attacks from the other end.
Predke finished in the last place with 1.5 points, while Parham ended in sixth with 3.5 points.
Levon Aronian made yet another draw in the tournament. This time against Ukraine’s Pavel Eljanov, to end his campaign with seven undecisive results.
Seven draws fetched Aronian 3.5 points, which placed him in fifth, while Eljanov sits fourth with four points.
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