 "Chess Olympiad: India men remain unbeaten, women suffer first defeat to Poland")
The Indian men’s chess team scored yet another thumping victory over Iran by a massive 3.5-0.5 points to stake their claim for a gold medal in the Open section of the 45th Chess Olympiad in Budapest on Thursday.
The Indian men took their tally to 16 points out of a possible 16 to sit top of the standings. Of 32 games played, India haven’t lost a single one.
World No. 4 Arjun Erigaisi started the rampage with his black pieces and crashed through the defenses of Bardiya Daneshwar who proved no match against a highly skilled display by the Indian.
Following Arjun’s win, World Championship challenger D Gukesh put it across Parham Maghsoodloo with black pieces, swindling the Iranian towards the end of the first time-control.
R Praggnanandhaa played out a draw with Amin Tabatabai to make sure of an Indian victory but Vidit Gujrathi had other plans as he outclassed Idani Pouya in all departments of the game to give another huge-margin victory to the team.
Mike Klein: "Have you thought at all about getting to 2800?"
— chess24 (@chess24com) September 19, 2024
Arjun Erigaisi: "No, not at all... my focus is only on the tournament."#ChessOlympiad pic.twitter.com/cZWBgVsAKg
For Arjun, this was another step forward towards the 2800 rating mark as he took his personal tally to a remarkable 7.5 points from eight games.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsIn Live ratings, Arjun is now at 2793 points and if he does cross the 2800 mark, he will be the 16th player ever in history and only the second Indian after Viswanathan Anand to do so.
Taking a cue from Arjun, Gukesh made sure he kept closing in also and his victory took him to 2785 rating points. This is the first time ever that there are two Indians in top five of the world rankings.
Arjun created early complications again going for the reverse Benoni with his black pieces. Daneshwar fell for some tactical tricks in the middle game and did not recover.
Gukesh also won with black and it was another Queen pawn game wherein the Indian chose to play the Dubov variation. Maghsoodloo went for some unwarranted complications and was caught off guard as the clocks ticked away in the middle game.
Soon the Iranian parted with a piece for a handful of pawns but fell prey to a an easy tactical stroke that ended the game.
Vidit Gujrathi went for the Sozin variation against the Sicilian defense by Pouya and his attack was simply overwhelming while Praggnanandhaa took things easy to ward off any serious counter play by Tabatabai.
The Indian Women's Team suffers their first loss today. In an exciting match, Team Poland defeated India by 2.5-1.5 points.
— ChessBase India (@ChessbaseIndia) September 19, 2024
It was not a good start for the Indian Team today - nobody got any advantage out of the opening, and things were not looking great for Harika and Divya.… pic.twitter.com/1dZqd7yx1T
In the Women’s section, Indian team tasted defeat for the first time at the Chess Olympiad by going down to Poland 1.5-2.5 - just as they did in the 2022 edition.
The Indian team suffered back-to-back defeats on two tables as Dronavalli Harika and R Vaishali were beaten by Alina Kashlinskaya and Monika Socko respectively.
Divya Deshmukh drew things back with a win against Aleksandra Maltsevskaya but Vantika Agrawal played out a stalemate versus Alicja Sliwicka.
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