Norway Chess: Erigaisi upsets Nakamura; Gukesh loses to Yi

IMAGE: India’s Arjun Erigaisi upset world No.2 Hikaru Nakamura to maintain fourth position in the Norway Chess tournament. Photograph: Norway Chess

Reigning World champion Dommaraju Gukesh’s roller-coaster ride continues. The Indian Grandmaster suffered defeat in an Armageddon tie-break and slipped to tied-fifth place, while Arjun Erigaisi upset American world No.2 Hikaru Nakamura to maintain fourth position in the Norway Chess tournament.

Defending champion Magnus Carlsen continued to shine on Saturday, taking his points tally to 9.5 following his Armageddon tie-break victory over Fabiano Caruana, another American GM, with black pieces.

On a day when the tournament delivered gripping action across all boards, all three games in the ‘Open’ category ended in draws and the Armageddon tie-break being applied to break the deadlock.

In a match, where fortunes swung wildly, Chinese GM Wei Yi was winning in the middlegame, while Gukesh, playing with black pieces, had the advantage in the endgame. But the Classical game finally ended in a stalemate after a lot of uncertainty.

Wei, who is proving to be a difficult customer in Armageddon, having defeated Carlsen and Nakamura in earlier games in the event, registered his third tie-break win as Gukesh was left searching for answers to overturn his fortunes.

The Chinese conceded he missed a great opportunity to out-manoeuvre Gukesh in the Classical game, which would have fetched him three full points, instead of 1.5.

“I hope I can win in a Classical game, but I missed a great chance today, I think,” said Wei.

Nakamura observed that Gukesh’s tendency to go after Wei from the get-go despite having black pieces would explain why the Indian ran into trouble in the Classical game.  In the end, it was the World champion who came close to winning the game, but a draw was fair to both the exponents.

Erigaisi came up with a rare idea in the Slav Defense to surprise Nakamura, but the American was quite familiar with the move. Despite the American having a great chance of winning, he fumbled as the games ended in a draw.

The Armageddon tie-break too ended in agony for Nakamura, who was winning until he nonchalantly played a move even though he had three minutes on the clock to surrender the initiative.

With his Armageddon win against Caruana, Carlsen leads the standings with 9.5 points. Caruana, is a close second with 8 and Nakamura is on 6.5.

In the women’s section, two-time World rapid champion, Koneru Humpy took the lead with 8.5 points following a tie-break win over China’s Lei Tingjie, while R. Vaishali scored a decisive win against Iranian-Spanish player Sara Khadem to log three points and move to fourth spot with 6.5 points.

Vaishali, who climbed out of last place after securing three full points, said: “This win feels good. The first few games did not go my way. I hope I’ll have a good tournament from here on.”

Results:

Open: Fabiano Caruana (USA – 8) lost to Magnus Carlsen (Nor – 9.5) in Armageddon; Wei Yi (Chn 5.5) beat D Gukesh (Ind – 5.5) in Armageddon; Arjun Erigaisi (Ind – 6) bt Hikaru Nakamura (USA – 6.5) in Armageddon.

Women: Sara Khadem (Esp – 5) lost to R Vaishali (Ind – 6.5), Koneru Humpy (Ind – 8.5) bt Lei Tingjie (Chn – 5) in Armageddon; Anna Muzychuk (Ukr 8) lost to Ju Wenjun (Chn – 7) in Armageddon.