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Sethuraman, Harika hog the limelight in Gibraltar
India’s emerging super Grandmaster SP Sethuraman and Dronavalli Harika hogged the limelight in the fourth round of the Gibraltar Open chess tournament on Friday even as former World champion Viswanathan Anand struggled to protect his rating in the first open tournament that he has played in the last 23 years.
Chennai
Sethuraman held his own with black pieces to thwart second seed Maxime Vachier Lagrave of France on the top board and eked out a draw while Harika got a creditable draw against Hungarian super GM Richard Rapport, rated 200 points above her. Sethuraman and Harika shared the second position with 10 others, including India’s Harikrishna and Abhijeet Gupta.
The four Indians logged 3.5 points from four rounds. Etienne Bacrot of France and Markus Ragger of Australia led the table with four points each while the top seed Hikaru Nakamura of the US and No 3 seed Viswanathan Anand were trailing in the third position with three points. Bacrot putwitted 17-year-old Aleksandra Goryachkina of Russia in the fourth round while Ragger defeated Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine.
Anand’s performance is below par as he conceded a second draw in four games, this time against Grigoriy Oparin of Russia, rated 225 points below him.
The Indian will meet Adrian Demuth of France (2535) in the fifth round which means he is far behind in the rating race with only five more rounds remaining. His average opposition is Elo 2445 and he has so far lost five Elo points.
He has not met anyone above 2600 and it will take a few full points against the top guns in the last five rounds if he has to take home anything by way of rating.
Interestingly, Nakamura is also in the same boat. Strangely, Anand finds himself in the company of lesser Indian mortals GN Gopal, Vishnu Prasanna, Surya Sekhar Ganguly, Vidit Santhosh Gujrathi, Padmini Rout, Sandipan Chanda, Siva Mahadevan and Aravindh Chithambaram with three points each.
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