The Sports-India Community

As many as 6 Indian players qualified to play in here......

Lalith and SS Ganguly lost in regular games in Rd 1...
Adhiban and Vidit lost in tie-break games in Rd 1...

Hari & Sethu won in regular games in Rd 1 and face each other in Rd 2...

Round 1 Results

Babuk M.R. Lalith (IND) 2557 0.5-1.5 Radoslaw Wojtaszek (POL) 2741
Vladislav Artemiev (RUS) 2675 1.5-0.5 Surya Shekhar Ganguly (IND) 2652

Vladimir Fedoseev (RUS) 2674 2.5-1.5 B. Adhiban (IND) 2659
Lazaro Bruzon (CUB) 2659 3.0-1.0 Santosh Gujrathi Vidit (IND) 2651

Vidit's loss was painful. For some unknown reason, he drew his 2nd classic game in 17 moves... And then blundered the last move of his first rapid game and didn't recover after that...

Max Illingworth (AUS) 2517 0.5-1.5 P. Harikrishna (IND) 2737
Sanan Sjugirov (RUS) 2664 0.0-2.0 S.P. Sethuraman (IND) 2640

Hari and Sethu won their first games to get the upper hand...
Sethu closed off with another win. Hari had a chance to get another win, but played it safe and took a draw to advance...

Round 2

P. Harikrishna (IND) 2737 0.5-1.5 S.P. Sethuraman (IND) 2640

Hari and Sethu drew their first classical game in R2. At some point, Hari had an upper hand in an opposite colored Bishop ending, but it didn't materialize to anything in the end.....

2nd classical game is on now...
Hari is in a slight bother after an inaccurate move in the middle game.... +1 according to the engines...
Now, Hari's is losing it after some more moves under time pressure getting to the first time control... +5 per the engines...

Update: Either Hari has a plan marching his king to f4 or he is just fooling around in a lost cause, where he is a knight down in a rook end game...

Update 2: And yes, Hari was just trying to fool around after the time control and resigned after a nice and hard think.... Disaster for Hari, but excited for Sethu....

Sethu gets into the Top-100 of the live ratings with this win, coming in at 2658.2 - #86...
Hari will lose big dropping from 2737 - #17 before the tournament to 2728.8 - #25 now...

Sethu's R3 opponent would be the winner of Shak-Yifan Hou (the winner of the match will be decided by tie-breakers tomorrow)...
to Sethu...

Round 3

S.P. Sethuraman (IND) 2640 0.0 - 1.0 S. Mamedyarov (AZE) 2736

Sethu lost the first classical game of Rd 3 with black pieces to the experienced and higher-rated Shak Mamedyarov.

Shak traded his rook for a knight to put pressure on Sethu's king side. Sethu had an immediate chance to give the rook back for a bishop to be close to equal, but Sethu decided to keep the material and slowly started getting into an inferior position. He finally gave up after making two inaccurate moves at the end of the first time control and resigned....

for the 2nd game with white pieces...

Round 3

S.P. Sethuraman (IND) 2640 0.5 - 1.5 S. Mamedyarov (AZE) 2736

Sethu could only draw the 2nd game with white pieces and bows out of the World Cup.....

Some valuable elo points gained to get into the Top-100 though....

End of Indian challenge......