Vantika Agrawal salvaged a draw for the Indian women’s team while the open team stayed in sole lead as the ninth round of the 45th Chess Olympiad concluded on Friday.
The Indian team decided to rest out-of-form GM D Harika against the US but on the top board, R Vaishali went down to Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova. On the second board, Divya Deshmukh settled for the peace result in an uneventful game with black against Carissa Yip.
On the fourth board, Tania Sachdev was in a favorable lead but couldn’t find the final blow and shared the point with Alice Lee.
On the fourth board, Tania Sachdev had almost everything going in her favor but could not find the knock-out blow when the opportunity came to share the point with Alice Lee.
It was left to Vantika to equalize the score and the youngster played with a lot of heart and commitment to beat her higher-rated opponent, GM Irina Krush.
The draw took India to 15 points, and they will now probably need two victories in the last two rounds to keep the gold medal chances alive.
Kazakhstan emerged as the new sole leader in this section on 16 points, defeating Poland 2.5-1.5.
In the Open section, the Indian men conceded the first point with four draws against defending champions Uzbekistan.
Despite Shamsiddin Vokhidov’s blundering against Arjun Erigaisi, the Indian GM failed to spot the mistake and Shamsiddin drew comfortably after that.
D Gukesh played out an easy draw with white pieces against Nodirbek Abdusattorov while R Praggnanandhaa also drew against Javokhir Sindarov.
Vidit Gujrathi was the first to finish his game against Jakhongir Vakhidov.
Indian men took their tally to 17 points from nine rounds and will have the all-important clash against top seed United States, who scored a hard-earned 2.5-1.5 victory over hosts Hungary.
Top standings after 9 rounds:
Open: 1. India – 17 points; 2-4. USA, Uzbekistan, China – 15 points each
Women: 1. Kazakhstan – 16; 2. India – 15
Comments are closed.