GM Sadhwani misses third place by half a point
   Date :09-May-2020

GM Sadhwani _1  
 
 
Principal Correspondent :
 
CITY’S only and Maharashtra’s youngest Grandmaster (GM) Raunak Sadhwani missed the podium finish by a whisker in an online blitz chess tournament held the other day. Other city players Divya Deshmukh and Sankalp Gupta finished the competition with seven and 6.5 points, respectively. GM Sadhwani, who was going strong in this Chess Triumphs Over Covid-19 online tournament, reportedly fell short by half a point to miss the bronze medal.
 
The tournament was conducted on chess.com website and was of 11 rounds. Around 328 players took part in the competition which was of 75 minutes. Several top ranked Indian Grandmasters took part in the competition which was won by GM Aravindh Chithambaram with 9.5 points in his kitty. Aravindh pocketed Rs 21,000 after he tied with an Uzbekistan player. A better progressive score gave GM Aravindh the title. Six players were tied at the second position with nine points. Fourteen-year-old Raunak played out a heartbreaking draw in the last round and ended up with 8.5 points. In the tournament, Raunak registered eight victories and suffered a couple of losses.
 
He played out a marathon 65-move draw against Uzbekistan IM Abdimalik Abdi Salim in the last round. Sadhwani started with intent and recorded six straight wins. However, he lost back to back games in next two rounds. He made a resolute comeback and defeated Indian IM Leon Mendonca and Russian IM Miran Oganian. The best part was from the eight wins which Raunak recorded, three came against higher ranked Grandmasters. His win also included a marathon 97-move victory over his own coach Swapnil Dhopade. He also got the better of D Gukesh and Ukraine’s Vitaliy Bernadskiy.