In the end, the Indian was left with a couple of pawns less. When the exchange of queens became imminent, Erigaisi called it a day
Arjun Erigaisi
Grandmaster Arjun Erigaisi tried hard but succumbed to Hikaru Nakamura's experience as the American won handsomely to proceed to the last-four of the Freestyle chess tournament here on Thursday. Magnus Carlsen of Norway needed a draw to proceed to the next stage against Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan and the world No.1 achieved just that to move into the last-four stage along side Fabiano Caruana of the United States, who came up with a fine effort to crash through the defences of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France.
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In the other quarterfinal matches, Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi drew with Vincent Keymer, forcing the match into a tie-break where the fortunes of both the players hang. It may be recalled that Keymer beat a star-studded field to emerge winner of the first edition in Weissenhaus, Germany in February. Meanwhile in the fight for the 9th to 12th spot, world champion D Gukesh and Vidit Gujrathi drew against Richard Rapport of Hungary and R Praggnanandhaa respectively and are now going to fight for the last two place. Praggnanandhaa will take on Rapport for a chance to finish in ninth spot. Erigaisi got a good chance in the middle game against Nakamura when he could have seized the initiative with a knight manoeuvre.
However, once that was missed, Nakamura cashed in on every opportunity that came his way. In the end, the Indian was left with a couple of pawns less. When the exchange of queens became imminent, Erigaisi called it a day. The game lasted 62 moves. Shuffling of the pieces at the start is slowly but surely becoming Carlsen's forte. The Norwegian did well in the middle game after a tentative opening but the position looked for a long time coming out of the Freestyle version where the pieces are set up randomly right before the start of the game. Carlsen came up with a fine exchange sacrifice maintaining parity, and after 49 moves the draw was a just result giving the best player in the world a deserving 1.5-0.5 victory. It may be interesting to note that Carlsen could have chosen Caruana or Nakamura as his opponent but he went for Abdusattorov.
Praggnanandhaa also needed a draw with Gujrathi and achieved it without much ado even as the latter tried to pose some initial threats. Praggnanandhaa exchanged pieces at will and forced Gujrathi to go for a perpetual check once the dust cleared. Gukesh's struggle in this version of the game continued as he could not make use of a promising position to force the match into a tiebreaker. Gukesh had two bishops against two knights in the middle game and looked in control but as the game progressed, the Indian missed the thread and had to settle for a draw.
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