Chess Olympiad | Anand dominate Austria completely; women squashes Venezuela 4-0

At the FIDE chess Olympiad, India made a glorious winning return after 12 years as Viswanathan Anand led India to a 3.5-0.5 with over Austria in the second round in Batumi, Georgia on Tuesday. Anand forced GM Markus Ragger to resign in a knight endgame after 47 moves. 

Earlier, Vidit Gujrathi had registered the team’s first full point by beating GM Andreas Diermair in just 32 moves. As B Adiban split the point against IM Peter Schreiner the tie was already in India’s favor. P Harikrishna, playing black on second board, came out triumph in a five-hour long battle against GM Valentin Dragnev to take India’s tally to 7 points from a possible eight and placed them in 22nd position in the overall standings, one point adrift of the leading group.

Now the men’s team will take over Canada, who has a total of 5.5 points after two rounds. The men dropped half a point each, but the women stayed in the top spot of the table by pinning down Venezuela 4-0. Eesha Karavade won over Tairu Manuela Rovira Contreras in the first 49 moves igniting the dominance and then D Harika, Tania Sachdev, and Padmini Rout performed comfortably.