Holding her nerves when it really mattered, R. Vaishali pulled off a sensational draw against her Belarus’ rival to complete India’s third triumph of the day for a share of the lead after six rounds of the FIDE Online Chess Olympiad on Thursday.
With three rounds to go, India and Hungary (11 match-points each) led the 10-nation Group B of the top section.
India scored over Shenzhen China (5-1), second seed Azerbaijan (4-2) and Belarus (3.5-2.5) while overnight leader Hungary posted narrow 3.5-2.5 victories over Egypt and France but in between, drew 3-3 with Belarus. This drawn encounter helped India catch up with Hungary after the fifth round.
These leaders, likely quarterfinalists from this group, face-off in the seventh round on Friday.
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Fresh from beating Azerbaijan, with the victorious duo of K. Humpy and Nihal Sarin providing the decisive difference, India struggled to beat ninth-placed Belarus. .
Spearhead Viswanathan Anand shut out 48-year-old Aleksej Aleksandrov in just 23 moves and Bhakti Kulkarni doubled the lead.Tania Sachdev drew but R. Praggnanandhaa suffered his second loss in as many days. At this point, Vidit Gujrathi and Vaishali were fighting inferior positions.
Fortunately, Vidit found a way to draw and that left the Indian hopes resting on Vaishali, who was down a bishop in the endgame. However, with only seconds remaining on the clock, Vaishali’s rival Khanim Balajayeva missed the winning continuation and the resultant draw in 80 moves brought tremendous cheer to the Indian camp.
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