Isle of Man (UK), Oct 31: Indian Grandmaster Vidit Gujrathi crashed through the defences of Hans Moke Niemann of the United States to join the leaders’ pack on 4.5 points after the end of the sixth round of FIDE Grand Swiss, a part of the world championship cycle, here.
Having lost the first round itself, it has been a remarkable turnaround for Vidit, who recorded his fourth victory in last five games displaying some immaculate technique.
Arjun Erigaisi is the other Indian in the eight-way lead that includes American duo of Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura, Russian Andrey Esipenkov, Serb Alexandr Predke, Javokhir SIndarov of Uzbekistan and Yu Yangti of China.
The next best Indians are a full point behind and need a lot of hard work in the last five rounds of USD 460000 prize money tournament. They are Aravindh Chithambaram, S L Narayanan and Nihal Sarin.
In the sixth round Chithambaram held higher ranked Nodirbek Abdusattarov of Uzbekistan to a draw while Nihal could not break the ice with his Kerala state-mate Narayanan.
After a stupendous run in the past few months, R Pragnanandhaa needs to get the steam back post the only rest day in the event.
The Indian star is still looking for an elusive first victory here as he split points for the sixth time in a row here, this time against Shant Sargasyan of Armenia.
Also settling for a draw was P Harikrishna against Aryan Chopra but in another shocker, D Gukesh succumbed to yet another defeat in the event as Azerbaijan’s Aydin Suleymanli proved stronger. Gukesh is completely out of contention and will look forward to some damage control in the remaining part of the event.
Coming back to winning ways was the Indian trio of Abhijeet Gupta, Raunak Sadhwani and B Adhiban. (PTI)
