World Rapid Chess Championship: Savitha emerges joint leader; Arjun slips to tied fifth

Savitha, a protégé of noted chess trainer Grandmaster R. B. Ramesh, raised her tally to 6.5 points from eight rounds to join China’s Tan Zhongyi and Georgia’s Alexandra Goryachkina, seeded three and four.

FILE PHOTO: B. Savitha Shri (left).

With the focus firmly on Arjun Erigaisi and Nihal Sarin in the midst of a few front-runners, Tamil Nadu’s B. Savitha Shri emerged as the performer of the day by stringing together four straight victories to jump into the joint lead of the women’s section of the World rapid chess championship in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday.

Savitha, a protégé of noted chess trainer Grandmaster R. B. Ramesh, raised her tally to 6.5 points from eight rounds to join China’s Tan Zhongyi and Georgia’s Alexandra Goryachkina, seeded three and four.

With a starting rank of 36, nobody expected Savitha to come out with an all-win record for the day during which she faced Kazakhstan’s Zarina Nurgaliyeva, Iran’s Sarasadat Khademalsharieh, former World champion from Bulgaria Antoaneta Stefanova and Georgia’s Bela Khotenashvili.

With three rounds remaining, half-a-point behind Savitha was K. Humpy, followed by Padmini Rout, D. Harika (4.5 each) and Tania Sachdev (4).

In the Open section, overnight joint leader Arjun (6.5 points) slipped to joint fifth place after two wins and two losses during the four rounds for the day.

Magnus Carlsen emerged as the only leader at 7.5 points from nine rounds. Vladislav Fedoseev (FIDE), Vincent Keymer (Germany) and defending champion Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan) shared the second spot at seven points.

Arjun started the day with a defeat to Fedoseev, then defeated Anish Giri, lost to Keymer and signed off with a crushing victory over Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.

Following Arjun are, Nihal Sarin, Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Vidit Gujrathi (6 each), Raunak Sadhwani (5.5), Abhimanyu Puranik, V. Pranav, B. Adhiban (5 each), P. Harikrishna, Harsha Bharathakoti, S. L. Narayanan (4.5 each), Sankalp Gupta, Aravindh Chithambaram, Arjun Kalyan (4 each) and N. Srinath (3.5).