IOM chess meet | Viswanathan Anand, Vidit Gujarathi win third round to move to joint second spot

09/27/2017

Former world champion Viswanathan Anand, Grandmasters Vidit Gujarathi and SP Sethuraman bounced back with white pieces to register convincing wins in the third round of the Isle of Man International chess meet. With the wins, all three players have moved to the joint second spot with 2.5 points.

Anand needed just 42 moves to get the better of Nikolas Lubbe, while Gujarathi too didn’t have to break sweat as he registered a convincing win against Michael Brown with just two more moves than Anand. Sethuraman defeated Andrew Ledger in the third round to hold on to the joint second spot with the other two Indians.

While the three made a comeback of sorts after a draw in the second round, overnight joint leader D Harika failed to play according to plan against Swedish Grandmaster Nils Grandelius and settled for a draw with white pieces.

“The game was really complicated from the initial stages and in the middle game too. Towards the end of the game, the positions remained unclear which led us to enter into a clearly equal variation ultimately leading to a draw,” Harika was quoted as saying by AFP.

Another overnight joint leader Swapnil Dhopade, playing black, also secured a draw against Peru’s Granda Zuniga Julio E.