Chess Olympiad Day 3 Highlights: Italy shocks Norway, India maintains positive results

Welcome to Sportstar’s live coverage of the 44th FIDE Chess Olympiad in Mahabalipuram. Track the Indians in action and all other major results here.

RESULTS LIVE:

The first few results are trickling in. Here’s a lowdown:

9:30pm: Italy’s Daniele Vocaturo held the World champion Magnus Carlsen to a draw. He also seems to have inspired his teammates as Italy, seeded 26th, shocked the third-seeded Norway 3-1.

9pm: In the open section, India scored a 3-1 victory against Greece; Pendyala Harikrishna and Arjun Erigaisi were the architects, with their wins over Dimitrios Mastrovasilis and Athanasios Mastrovasilis, respectively. Vidit Gujarat was held to a draw by Nikolaos Theodorou. Krishnan Sasikiran also had to settle for half-a-point, with Evgenios Ioannidis.

India 2 is leading 3-0 against Switzerland. India 3 defeated Iceland 3-1, riding on victories by S.P. Sethuraman and Abhijeet Gupta, Hannes Stefansson and Gudmundur Kjartansson, respectively. Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Abhimanyu Puranik could only take half-a-point each from their games.

8:30pm: India 2 too won 3-1, against Indonesia. The victory was fashioned by Vantika Agrawal and Soumya Swaminathan, both of whom won with black pieces, against Irene Sukandar and Fariha Mariroh, respectively. The games of Padmini Rout and Mary Ann Gomes were drawn.

Against Austria, P.V. Nandhidhaa received a walkover for India 3 from Chiara Polterauer, Eesha Karavade drew with Katharina Newrkla on the top board. Pratyusha Bodda defeated Elisabeth Hapala, but M. Varshini Sahithi went down to Nikola Mayrhuber.

7:20pm: Vidit Gujrathi, who was playing with black pieces, was held to a draw by Nikolas Theodorou, the Greek player who is rated 139 Elo points below. The two men decided to split the point after 30 moves with only the queens the opposite-colour bishops – among the pieces – still on the board.

But, Pendyala Harikrishna won his top board battle against Dimitrios Mastrovasilis to ensure that the main Indian team well-placed in the match against Greece. He won in 30 moves. He had been handed a decisive advantage seven moves earlier by Black with a mishandling of the knight.

Meanwhile the young India 2, which has several admirers, scored three victories in its match against Switzerland. D. Gukesh, Nihal Sarin and Raunak Sadhwani posted wins over Nico Georgiadis, Sebastian Bogner and Fabian Baenzinger, respectively..

We will showcase Indian boards here. Check out your favourite Indian player’s round 3 performance below:

Here’s the complete breakdown of Indian players in the fray today. You can track their progress here:

Here’s who the women go up against today.

Harika Dronavalli is in action for the first time in this edition of the Olympiad. The ace Indian chess player is expecting her first child and that story is remarkable on its own. Read more about that here:

WATCH DAY 03 LIVE HERE: LIVE STREAM

Open category: The going got a bit tougher but Indian teams came out stronger, as expected.

These are earlier days in the Chess Olympiad here and the casualty list is still without a name on it. Stronger teams lived up to their seeding and added two more match-points. Unlike the opening round, more fancied teams dropped at least a draw or two on Saturday.

For the second straight day, USA’s search for a 4-0 sweep continued.

If it was Levon Aronian on Friday, three of his teammates - birthday-boy Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So and Sam Shankland - joined him on Sunday with a draw against their names. The winning difference was Leinier Dominguez Perez on the third board against Jose Fernando Cubas.

Unlike Caruana, World champion Magnus Carlsen resumed his Olympiad campaign after a six-year gap, with a late win. For the better part of the contest, up to the 74th move to be precise, Georg Meier played flawlessly. A dubious continuation by Meier on the 75th move paved Carlsen’s way to win in 80 moves.

For the host, it was another fruitful day. Though Arjun Erigaisi escaped with a draw, victories on other boards gave India 1 a comprehensive victory over Moldova. The much-followed India 2 raced away to a 4-0 triumph by playing to its reputation against Estonia. For India 3, M. Karthikeyan’s fourth-board win provided the decisive difference against Mexico as Surya Sekhar Ganguly, S. P. Sethuraman and Abhijeet Gupta followed with draws.

Women’s Category: Much like Fabiano Caruana in the Open section, the spearhead of top seed India 1, K. Humpy could get nothing more than a draw even as one-sided results continued to flow in the women’s section of the Chess Olympiad.

Saturday saw Humpy, the strongest woman player here, craftily stonewall her Argentine rival Marisa Zuriel’s designs by locking the centre of the board to earn a draw in 44 moves. In this positional battle, Humpy, rated over 400 points above Marisa, failed to get any advantage.

On the lower boards, it was a different story.

Making amends for her first-round marathon that lasted 103 moves, Tania Sachdev needed only 36 moves to taste a second victory in less than 24 hours. R. Vaishali took a longer route to win after Bhakti Kulkarni gave the desired finish to her game.

Padmini Rout, after resting in the first round, could only get a draw on the second board for India 2. On the rest of the boards, Vantika Agrawal, Soumya Swaminathan and Mary Ann Gomes emerged as comfortable winners.

For India 3, Eesha Karavade and P. V. Nandhidhaa won on the higher boards while the lower ones produced draws.

Third seed Georgia could only manage a 2.5-1.5 victory over Lithuania in the closest match involving a top-10 seed. Though Nana Dzagnidze and Salome Melia won as expected, Meri Arabidze’s loss to Gabija Simkunaite - rated 416 points lower - on the fourth board was a stunner.

The  Chess Olympiad is being held in India for the first time since the inaugural tournament in 1927 with the honour coming to Chennai, considered the chess capital of the country. This is also the first time in 30 years that the Olympiad is coming to Asia.

If you’ve missed the Olympiad hype train, we have you covered. Here’s everything you need to know about the biggest event in the game in brief:

• ⦿ The event will see the highest number of countries participating in an Olympiad
• ⦿ Nearly 350 teams in the Open and women’s sections from 187 countries will be in fray. Of these, 188 teams are in the Open section and 162 in the women’s.
• ⦿ Previously, the Batumi Olympiad in 2018 had set the record with 184 and 150 teams in the Open and women’s sections, respectively, from 179 countries. 
• ⦿ India’s 30-member squad will be their biggest squad ever. 
• ⦿ Given Russia and China’s non-participation, India Team A is seeded second while the USA tops the ranking list.

Live streaming of the Chess Olympiad will be available on the official YouTube channel of FIDE Chess Olympiad. The event will be telecast live on the Doordarshan TV channel in India. You can follow the boards and all the analysis from matches on each day on Sportstar too.