New Delhi, September 20, 2024: The Indian men’s team moved closer towards the gold medal with an eighth straight win while the Indian women’s team’s unbeaten run came to an end in the eighth round of the 45th Chess Olympiad in Budapest on Thursday.
The men’s team beat Iran by a significant margin of 3.5-0.5 to continue being the sole lead with 16/16 points. The women’s team lost to Poland 1.5-2.5 but stayed on top, in joint lead with Poland Kazakhstan with 14 points.
The men’s team’s statement victory propelled Arjun Erigaisi and D Gukesh’s rating close to the mark of 2800 and this is the first time ever that there are two Indians in top five of the world rankings.
Arjun Erigaisi was back to winning ways, beating Bardiya Daneshwar with a highly skilled display with black pieces. The Indian created early complications again going for the reverse Benoni with his black pieces and Daneshwar fell for some tactical tricks in the middle game and did not recover.
Arjun now has a remarkable 7.5 points from eight games in Budapest. This win took him within touching distance of the 2800 rating mark. In live ratings now, Arjun is now at 2793 points and if he does cross the 2800 mark, he will only be the 16th player ever in history and only the second Indian after Viswanathan Anand to do so.
After Arjun’s win, World Championship challenger D Gukesh beat Parham Maghsoodloo with black pieces, catching the Iranian towards the end of the first time-control. This victory took him to 2785 rating points.
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 an easy tactical stroke that ended the game.
R Praggnanandhaa was under a some pressure but managed to play out a draw with Amin Tabatabai to make sure of an Indian victory and Vidit Gujrathi provided the cherry on top as he outplayed Idani Pouya for another huge-margin victory for India. He went for the Sozin variation against the Sicilian defense by Pouya and his attack was simply overwhelming.
In the women’s section, it was a rare off day as with both D Harika and R Vaishali losing their matches.
Vaishali, up against Monika Socko, was in time trouble and was pushing for a draw but the Polish player managed to make it a win to start proceedings according to the reports published in espn.in.
Divya Deshmukh, continuing her fine form in Budapest, levelled things 1-1. She turned around the match against Aleksandra Maltsevskaya with black pieces and in the end, was the only one to get a win against Poland.
Harika had a battle on her hands against Alina Kashlinskaya on the top board and stayed in it till the end before the Alina’s pushing extracted an error and resulted in 2-1 for Poland.
Vantika Agarwal, who had the pressure to keep India in the match, attacked well but made a mistake with the clock running down which enabled Alicja Sliwicka to hold for a match-winning draw.
In the ninth round, the Indian men’s team will take on defending Champions Uzbekistan while the women’s team with face USA in a bid to get back to winning ways.
