Wijk Aan Zee (Netherlands), Feb 1: World champion D Gukesh maintained his half-point lead with an easy draw against Wei Yi of China, while R Praggnanandhaa outwitted top seed Fabiano Caruana of the United States to come within striking distance of the leader after the 11th round of Tata Steel Masters here.
Playing the white side of an Italian game, Gukesh went for a relatively new plan by pushing his central pawn in the opening that just helped Wei Yi maintain parity after the trade of queens.
The Indian was up a pawn when the endgame surfaced but the position was level and the peace was signed in 30 moves.
The draw helped Gukesh jump to eight points out of a possible 11 in the first major tournament of the year, while Praggnanandhaa stunned Caruana with black pieces to move to 7.5 points. Sharing the second spot is Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan, who played out a draw with German Vincent Keymer.
It was a Queen’s gambit declined by Praggnanandhaa and Caruana went for one of the complex variations to show his intent after getting some mediocre results in the tournament thus far.
Praggnanandhaa has seldom had trouble fighting complicated positions with loads of tactical possibilities, and Friday was no different as he went for an attack quickly against the white queen after the players had castled on opposite wings.
As it happened, Caruana’s 32nd move was a huge blunder giving Praggnanandhaa another victory five moves later.
On a good day for other Indians too, P Harikrishna accounted for Alexey Sarana of Serbia while Leon Luke Mendonca put it across Vladimir Fedoseev of Slovenia. Arjun Erigaisi, meanwhile, played out another draw with Jorden van Foreest of Holland.
In the penultimate round now, Gukesh is set to meet Foreest with black pieces and chess buffs expect some fireworks as the world champion will be keen to push ahead of the field.
Praggnanandhaa will play his last white game in the tournament against Sarana while Nodirbek has to play another black against Erigaisi, who is yet to win a game having lost four and drawn seven.
In the Challengers’ section, Divya Deshmukh got a much-needed victory over Irina Bulmaga of Romania but R Vaishali found the going tough and lost to Aydin Suleymanli of Azerbaijan. Divya, on three points, still has a lot of catching up to do while Vaishali remained on five points.
Meanwhile, Dutchman Erwin L’Ami regained the sole lead in this section after a finely-crafted victory over Chinese teenager Mioyi Lu. L’Ami, on eight points, benefitted as the overnight sole leader Nguyen Thai Dai Van was outdone by Svane Frederik of Germany. (PTI)
