Chess World Cup, Round 3: Karthik moves to next round, Vidit loses in tie-breakers
It wasn’t the best of days for India at the Chess World Cup. Of the three men who played the third round tie-breakers at Resort Rio in Arpora, only one could get through.
Karthik Venkataraman did well to move into the fourth round; he took only the first set of tie-breakers to win his match against Bogdan-Daniel Deac of Romania. After drawing the first game, he won the second with black pieces.
Vidit Gujrathi had begun the day well, beating the American Sam Shankland with black pieces in the first game of the first set of tie-breakers. So the 19th seed from Nashik needed only a draw in the second (he had white pieces), but he lost to make the score 1-1. In the second set of tie-breakers, the first game was drawn, but in the second, the American, seeded 46th, won.
Before that, S.L. Narayanan had been knocked out by his higher-rated Chinese rival Yu Yangyi. The Kerala player could not recover from his loss in the day’s first game, and the second game was drawn. The 17th-seeded Chinese thus won 1.5-0.5.
The most exciting match of the day was the one between the 11th seed Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France and Vladislav Artemiev of Russia. It went all the way to sudden death after the Frenchman won the last game of the tie-breakers. In the sudden death, he had to win, while his rival, with black pieces, only needed a draw.
“It was a great match,” said Vachier-Lagrave shortly after his hard-earned victory, for which he had to fight for more than five and a half hours.
“It took all that I had in me to come back. And it took very long. Vlad (Vladislav) is a very resilient player, so am I. But I would gladly have avoided two must-win games.”
Karthik, who booked his place in the fourth round much earlier, said he played well in both games against Bogdan-Daniel Deac.
“I don’t know if I was objectively winning at some point in the first game, but I was clearly better in the second,” he said.
“I think it was kind of smooth. I got an advantage and then I managed, and his main problem was he was getting low on time in both games.”
After a day’s rest – the first of the tournament – the fourth round, which has five Indians, will start on Tuesday.
Important Results
Third round (tie-breaks)
Wei Yi (Chn) bt Benjamin Gledura (Hun) 1.5-0.5; Maxime Vachier-Lagrave bt Vladislav Artemiev 1-1, 1-1, 1-1, 1-1, 1-0; Richard Rapport (Hun) bt Yagiz Erogmus 1.5-0.5; Yun Yangyi (Chn) bt S.L. Narayanan 1.5-0.5; Sam Shankland (USA) bt Vidit Gujrathi 1-1, 1.5-0.5; Karthik Venkataraman bt Bogdan-Daniel Deac (Rou) 1.5-0.5; Sevin Samuel (USA) bt Evgeniy Najer (Rus) 2-0; Alexey Sarana (Srb) bt Jorden van Foreest (Ned); Daniil Dubov bt Georg Meier (Uru) 1-1, 1.5-0.5.
Published on Nov 09, 2025