Chennai Grand Masters 2023: Harikrishna, Sjugirov joint leaders after second round

All three Indians in the tournament – D. Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi and Pentala Harikrishna – drew their respective games in the second round of the Chennai Grand Master 2023 at the Leela Palace Hotel here on Saturday.

While Gukesh and Arjun played out a comfortable draw in the clash of two Indian prodigies, Harikrishna had to fight his way to hold Serbia’s Alexandr Predke and join Hungary’s Sanan Sjugirov in the joint lead after Sjugirov handed a crushing loss to Pavel Eljanov of Ukraine.

Top seed Iran’s Parham Maghsoodloo recovered after the round-one loss and played a handy draw against experienced Levon Aronian of the USA.

Crowd favourite Gukesh, playing with white pieces, started with e4 as the game went on for the Sicilian Defence, with only one exchange transpiring till the 17th move.

READ | Chennai Grand Masters 2023: Erigaisi loses to Harikrishna, Gukesh plays draw against Aronian in first round

Arjun traded the dark-squared bishop before taking Gukesh’s other bishop with the knight, prompting the game to move quickly.

The 20-year-old attempted to gain tempo from the kingside with the active presence of queen and rook, but Gukesh managed to take queens off the board before a menacing attack could be launched.

Gukesh accepted the handshake offered by Arjun on the 32nd move to finish with 1.0 points in two rounds, while the latter went home with his first points.

Harikrishna — playing with black pieces — went for the Queen’s Gambit Declined opening that transpired to the Catalan game that went quickly off the blocks after both players blitzed out the first few initial moves.

Harikrishna took over 30 minutes to play his queen-takes-pawn at d4, while Predke came out of the preparation only after the 14th move.

Harikrishna later gave Predke a significant advantage with rook-takes-pawn at b2, which had to be compensated for with quality responses to the Russian based in Serbia.

Eventually, both players exchanged all of their pieces, settling for a 0.5-0.5 draw.

“I am quite happy with the result today,” Harikrishna said after the game. “I did not have any chances in the game and had a slightly difficult position because I missed one of his key moves, but then I found a nice sequence of moves to hold Predke.”

“I felt the position was better for him (Predke) with white and I needed to be careful to negate any problems,” he said.

Harikrishna will face Eljanov in the third round.

“I just go game by game and haven’t seen what my opponent plays in general, so first I’ll go and see what lines to prepare,” the 37-year-old from Guntur said of his strategy for the next round.

“It largely depends on your opponents, so you see what ideas you have and then you have to do everything. It’s difficult to give a general answer to what my routines are during the tournament because they change continuously,” he added.