World Cup chess: Aravindh stuns Adams, joins four Indians in second round

Aravindh Chithambaram scored a memorable 4.5-3.5 win over the highly experienced British Grandmaster Michael Adams to join four other Indians in the second round of the World Cup chess championship.

Aravindh broke the sequence of seven draws to win the eighth game, over reduced time-time control, to win a king-pawn ending in 69 moves. (FILE IMAGE)

Aravindh Chithambaram scored a memorable 4.5-3.5 win over the highly experienced British Grandmaster Michael Adams to join four other Indians in the second round of the World Cup chess championship here on Thursday.

After Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Abhijeet Gupta, S. P. Sethuraman and S. L. Narayanan failed to advance, Aravindh broke the sequence of seven draws to win the eighth game, over reduced time-time control, to win a king-pawn ending in 69 moves.

As per the format, to break the tie, two games with a time control of 25 minutes, with a 10-second increment per move are scheduled. Should the tie persist, two more games with a time control of 10 minutes, with a 10-second increment are played.

In case the scores remain equal, two games with a time control of five minutes are played, with a three-second increment per move. If the deadlock remains, an Armageddon game will be resorted to. Here, the player with white pieces gets five minutes on his clock and black, four minutes, with a two-second increment per move from move 61. The player with white pieces needs to win to advance. A draw is enough for the player with black pieces to be declared the winner.

The results (involving Indians):Round One (after tie-break games): Vladimir Fedoseev (Rus) beat Surya Shekhar Ganguly 4-2 (the first two games rapid games were drawn and Feedoseev won the next two); David Anton Guijarro (Esp) bt S. L. Narayanan 2.5-1.5; (The first rapid game was drawn, Guijarro won the second); Tamir Nabaty (Isr) bt S. P. Sethuraman 3-1 (Nabaty won both rapid games); Aravindh Chithambaram bt Michael Adams (Eng) 4.5-3.5 (The first five tie-break games were drawn before Aravindh won the sixth); Anton Korobov (Ukr) bt Abhijeet Gupta 4-2 (Abhijeet won the first and Korobov won the next three). Second round  pairings (involving Indians): P. Hari Krishna v Vladimir Fedoseev (Rus); Vidit Gujrathi v Aleksandr Rakhmanov (Rus); B. Adhiban v Yu Yangyi (Chn); Nihal Sarin v Eltaj Safarli (Aze); Aravindh Chithambaram v Evgeny Tomashevsky (Rus).