Indians put up a good display

 

 

The Indians collectively put up a good display on third day of the Maharashtra Chess Festival in progress at the Naivedyam North Star in Nagpur Raunak Sadhwani and Vidit Gujrathi and were once again at their dazzling best as they defeated Nigel Short and Peter Svidler respectively to take lead in the 16 game Maharashtra Challenge Match. Both have tallied 6 points each while Svidler and Short have scored 3 points each.

A victory in the Classical game fetches 3 points. Raunak for the second time in this event opted for the Sicilian defence against Short’s King pawn Opening. The game was a closed Sicilian with Raunak emerging better from the Opening. A positional rook sacrifice for a bishop on the 18th turn by Raunak broke open Short’s castle and Raunak played a patient game thereafter, slowly getting his pieces to better squares to build up an attack. Short’s defence crumbled and soon Raunak’s queen, knight and bishop were targeting the King even as his central passed pawn threatened to march towards the queening square. Short resigned on the 41st move when threatened with checkmate. “ It was a good game and I enjoyed playing. I am hoping to do well in the final classical game tomorrow” said Raunak.

The Symmetrical English encounter between Vidit and Svidler had the players treading very cautiously in the opening stage with the Indian appearing slightly better out of the Opening. Vidit thought too long on the 12th move, an indication that he may have gone out of his opening preparation but the exchange of queens followed on the 16th turn and Vidit appeared better. Play for most part focused on the queen-side where there were a spate of exchanges at regular intervals. “I did get some edge out of the opening but it needed clinical precision to consolidate on it and missed the way a bit,” admitted Vidit later. Ironically, Vidit’s knight, defying chess basics, went to the edge of the board on the 18th turn and virtually paralysed Svidler’s pieces. Svidler delayed castling till the 18th move and tried to group his pieces together.

Svidler’s decision of trying to avoid exchanges proved costly and by then Vidit had better placed pieces. On the 22nd turn Svidler overlooked a tactical stroke in trying to get his bishop into the game and resigned on the next turn when faced with the loss of a piece. A delighted Vidit quipped, “Svidler was a tad ambitious and in trying to evade a disadvantageous position by not exchanging pieces.” Meanwhile, the four overnight joint leaders GM Luka Paichadze, IM Raahul VS, FM Harshad S and Sammed Jaykumar Shete playing on the top two boards were involved in draws. Top seed Boris Savchenko defeated FM Goutam Krishna to catch up with the overnight leaders and with 3.5 points is jointly leading with Luka, Raahul, Harshad, Sammed, Vedant Pannesar and Kushagra Mohan.