Airthings Masters Chess Championship: P Harikrishna slips to 10th spot after one loss, three draws on day 2

Chennai: Indian Grandmaster P Harikrishna slipped to 10th spot after managing just one win and three draws on day two of the Champions Chess Tour Airthings Masters online chess championship. World champion Magnus Carlsen bounced back to the top. Harikrishna, who had drawn all his four games on the opening day Saturday, went down in round five to Dutch GM Anish Giri and then shared honours in the other three matches on Sunday night. He drew with Alexander Grischuk and Hikaru Nakamura. In the final round of the day, Harikrishna had a chance to push for a win against Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi but settled for a draw. The India number two now has 3.5 points and has three more games to attempt to finish in the top eight and qualify for the knockout phase. Harikrishna has matches against Lev Aronian, Wesely So and Teimour Radjabov. World No 1 Carlsen who was held to draws in all four games on day one, bounced back with a victory over Daniil Dubov in round five. He then drew the other three games (against David Anton Guijjaro, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Anish Giri) to join the leaders. Six players – Dubov, Nakamura, Aronian, Carlsen, Radjabov and So – share the lead with 4.5 points after eight rounds. The top eight from the preliminary rounds qualify for the quarterfinals. The 12-player tournament runs until January 3 and has a prize fund of $200,000 with the winner picking up $60,000. In the preliminary stage, the players play each other once over 11 rounds at rapid chess, before the top 8 players go forward to the knockout. In the knockout stage, each match would be played over two days, with four rapid games each day. If the match score is 1:1 after the second day the players switch to two 5+3 blitz games followed, if needed, by Armageddon (sudden death tie-break).