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Isle of Man Masters: R Praggnanandhaa stuns Pavel Eljanov; Viswanathan Anand, Vidit Gujrathi held
R Praggnanandhaa scored a major upset defeating elite GM Pavel Eljanov while Viswanathan Anand and Vidit Gujrathi were held to a draw by lower-ranked players.
R Praggnanandhaa scored a major upset defeating elite GM Pavel Eljanov. John Saunders[/caption]But just when it seemed Praggnanandhaa was in a bit of trouble, he found a way to complicate the position. Taking a page off Vidit Gujrathi's book, Praggnanandhaa essayed an ingenious queen sacrifice that led to an unclear position. After the haze had cleared, Praggananandhaa had emerged an exchange ahead in the material count. Eljanov had just one pawn to compensate for this but his connected passed pawns on the kingside looked particularly threatening.In the final phase of the game, Praggnanandha rushed to create a passed pawn of his own to generate sufficient counterplay in order to stymie Black's kingside passers. Once this was accomplished, converting the game was only a matter of technique.GM Abhijeet Gupta's also scored a half upset on the sixth board holding the former world championship challenger, GM Boris Gelfand to a draw. Gupta had the white pieces in a Semi Slav Defence wherein he came up with a new idea in the line that entailed a pawn sacrifice on his 17th turn.The complex middle game that consequently arose gave Gupta a nice initiative. Gelfand reacted well, finding all the right moves to keep things under control. But the game remaining complicated, well into the endgame. Both sides had passed pawns on opposite wings. Gelfand even gave up a piece on his 37th move to expedite the advancement of his pawns.Gupta also went toe to toe with the world championship challenger, returning the piece at a timely moment and then gave a piece sacrifice of his own to force matters. By the 50th move, Gelfand was forced to trade off his last pawn and settle for a draw even though he had a full extra piece in the final position.With this draw, both Gupta and Gelfand slipped down to the second spot on the leaderboard where they remain tied with 18 others.Vidit Gujrathi, who was one of the leaders going into the third round, had shown excellent form thus far. Both of his initial games featured enterprising sacrificial play. But in the third round, he agreed to a rather insipid draw against his countryman, GM Vaibhav Suri. In a Gruenfeld Defence, the players drew by repetition merely 16 moves into the game.Viswanathan Anand's game against Svane Rasmus wasn't much different either. Anand also had the black pieces and just decided to call it a day after 24 moves.While a draw, per se, isn't a bad result, it is just the length of the games that is a little concerning. The tournament observes a 30 move no draw offer rule but, apparently, a move repetition is an easy excuse around it.Both Vidit and Anand were more than a hundred Elo points higher rated than their opponents and, in the spirit of the game, could have fought a little longer. Also, since this is an open event, these easily conceded half points might well haunt them later in the tournament.Indian players in the joint second place include Vidit Gujrathi, Vaibhav Suri, Adhiban Baskaran and R Praggnanandhaa. Viswanathan Anand is one spot further down the leaderboard with a score of 2.0/3.Games of round 3[caption id="attachment_5431191" align="alignnone" width="825"]
Standings after Round 3.[/caption]Aditya Pai is an editor at ChessBase IndiaFirst Published:Oct 23, 2018, 16:33:52 IST
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