Arjun Erigaisi through to Chess World Cup quarterfinals, says 'taking one game at a time'

GM Arjun Erigaisi advanced to the quarterfinal of the ongoing FIDE World Cup with a win with black pieces over two-time champion GM Levon Aronian of the United States in the second game of the round of 16 on Saturday.

GM P Harikrishna, the other Indian in the fray, settled for a draw against GM Jose Eduardo Matinez Alcantara of Mexico and their round of 16 clash will now be decided in tiebreakers on Sunday.

Arjun says draw offer from Aronian gave confidence to win

With the game in balance, Arjun broke through in the centre to get an uneven pawn structure with his knights on the prowl to cause some king side damage. Aronian could not recover from a worse position as Arjun kept pushing on his advantage to register a victory.

After the win, Arjun said that even though he regretted some of his early moves, but Aronian’s knight move offering a draw helped him turn things around.

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“I started regretting some of my moves. I was not sure whether I should put the queen on d7 or c7. I decided it was d7 and then I was regretting. h6 also I played but I regretted it as well. At some point I wasn’t really sure if I was the one on better side of equality or the worse side,” Arjun said.

“But when he played Knight e3 and offered a draw. that kind of gave me some confidence that he is happy with a draw. So, that gave me some leverage and after that it wasn’t so easy for him,” he added.

Arjun is now the highest-ranked player remaining in the competition, but he is not minding this fact at all.

“It does not matter to me. I am just happy that I am still there. I’ll take one match at a time and focus on that,” he said.

Top three finishers at the Chess World Cup will qualify for the Candidates tournament.

Chess World Cup complete results round 5 game 2

Javokhir Sindarov (UZB) beat Frederic Svane (GER) 1.5-0.5 goes to tiebreak; Levon Aronian (USA) lost to Arjun Erigaisi (IND); Sam Shankland (USA) drew with Daniil Dubov (FID) 1-1 goes to tiebreak; Alexander Donchenko (GER) drew with Liem Le Quang (VIE) 1-1 goes to tie-break; Gabriel Sargissian (ARM) lost to Nodirbek Yakubboev (UZB) 0.5-1.5; Andrey Esipenko (FID) drew with Aleksey Grebnev (FID) 1-1 goes to tiebreak; Sevian Samuel (USA) lost to Wei Yi (CHN) 0.5-1.5; Jose Eduardo Martinez Alcantara (MEX) drew with P Harikrishna (IND) 1-1 goes to tiebreak.