The performance of Indian chess players in the Rapid and Blitz chess tournament turned out to be disappointing. Top seed Fabiano Caruana performed as expected to take the title. Grandmaster Dommaraju Gukesh of India, the candidate champion, scored 14 points.
He finished seventh in the tournament. Apart from Gukesh, Vidit Gujarati finished ninth with 11 points. The former’s performance will be reviewed in the faster version. The team will look at it ahead of the World Championship match. That is scheduled in November against China’s Ding Liren. Russia’s Ian Nepomnia is fifth with 18.5 points, while American Levon Aronian is sixth with 17 points.
Anish Giri is eighth with 13.5 points. Croatia’s Ivan Saric finished tenth and last with 10 points. Dommaraju Gukesh, in the Rapid section, went decently on 9 points out of a possible 18. Where he scored three wins, three draws, and three losses. But in the blitz section, the Indians could muster just five points out of 18 games. That caused his loss and drop to seventh place.
Fabiano Caruana equals Magnus Carlsen’s record
Caruana continued his brilliant run with a victory in the Superweight Classic. He equaled Norway’s Magnus Carlsen’s record for world number one with 27 points. The Italian master performed well from the start. He also surpassed the Grand Chess tour standings that was led by Indian Rameshbabu Praggnanadhaa coming into this tournament.
The second place was shared by Alireza Firouzja and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France and American Wesley So. After all, they were tallied 23 points apiece. Praggnanandhaa is out of the fray for now. Caruana now leads the table at 22.5 points ahead of Firouzja who has 17.58 points.
