Apr 10, 2025 11:35 PM IST
The world No.4’s loss introduced an finish to Indian problem for the highest prize within the Paris leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour
Bengaluru: Arjun Erigaisi couldn’t salvage the sport this time round. After managing to attract Sport 1 from a tough place, the Indian was outplayed by world No 2 Hikaru Nakamura of their second classical quarterfinal knockout match-up on Thursday.
Hikaru Nakamura. (Wikimedia Commons)
The world No 4’s loss successfully means no Indian participant can be in competition for the $200,000 high prize within the Paris leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour.
“For better or worse, he’s (Arjun) gained a lot of rating in open tournaments and I think that worked against him specifically in this game because I felt that at one point he should have sensed the danger and tried to make a draw,” Nakamura mentioned on the Chessbase India stream. “But I felt like he was treating it like some open tournament and me like some 2600 player where you keep the game going and think your opponent’s going to blunder… and it just got really very bad.”
“My general sense about these kids is that they’re all very talented but I feel like they’re all trying to play like Magnus, where they keep the game going. In a lot of cases they’re not picking the moments, they’re just automatically doing it. If they continue to improve they will learn to pick the moments where you have to just kill the game and make a draw versus the ones where you keep pushing towards the end. That will make a huge difference.”
Earlier on Thursday night, Fabiano Caruana was the primary participant among the many pool of quarterfinalists to discover a place within the semi-finals with a win over Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.
He’ll face world No 1 Magnus Carlsen subsequent, who usual a miraculous escape after discovering himself on the ropes for the better a part of his sport in opposition to Nodirbek Abdusattorov. Requested if he attributed his struggles early within the sport to the beginning place, Carlsen cracked a smile and self-effacingly pinned it all the way down to a “skill issue.” “Right now, I just can’t figure it (Freestyle) out. That’s the beauty of the game. It’s supposed to be hard.”
The quarterfinal between Vincent Keymer and Ian Nepomniachtchi led to a second consecutive drawn classical sport. The younger German, who gained the Weissenhaus leg of Freestyle Chess in February, went on to take down Nepomniachtchi in a two-game fast (10 + 10 time management) playoff.
The second sport of the 9-Twelfth place encounters led to attracts, which was all Praggnanandhaa R and Richard Rapport wanted to win their respective matches in opposition to Vidit Gujrathi and reigning world champion Gukesh D since they each had already gained Sport 1. Rapport will play Praggnanandhaa for the Ninth-Tenth place match-up.
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