WIJK AAN ZEE, Jan 23: So far so good might have been the case for Dommaraju Gukesh but the road ahead is not easy for the Indian Grandmaster as he gets to the business end of Tata Steel Masters chess tournament now underway here.
With five points in his kitty from eight games played thus far, Gukesh leads the standings along with Dutchman Anish Giri and Iranian-turned-Frenchman Alireza Firouza but has a tall task ahead of him as his countryman Vidit Gujrathi stands in front of him in the next round.
Vidit has been rock-solid throughout the event so far but as he himself elaborated, this was not a part of the plan.
Starting with six draws, the Nasik-based Super GM came up with an exemplary performance to beat Firouza but then played out a draw in the eighth round. This left him half a point behind the leaders’ group but Gujrathi seems in good nick to floor everyone, as he is known to strike when it matters the most.Teenaged superstar R Praggnanandhaa has also had a decent outing thus far, sharing the same platform as Gujrathi on 4.5 points but a plus one score will hardly satisfy him.
Praggnanandhaa is on the verge of dethroning Viswanathan Anand officially as the Indian number one on February 1 but for that he needs to rally with the flow of events and come up triumphs in at least two games from the remaining five.
In the challengers tournament being held simultaneously, GM Leon Luke Mendonca is the pick amongst the Indians with D Harika and Divya Deshmukh also looking at adding to their current ELO ratings.If Leon can topple the next couple of challenges, he will be in the front row that will give him a chance to play the Masters next year. (PTI)
