Vidit Gujarati again defeats Nakamura in the ninth round of chess tournament – Dainik Savera Times

Toronto: Indian Grandmaster Vidit Gujarati made a strong comeback after the defeat in the last match and defeated second seed Hikaru Nakamura of America in the ninth round of the Candidates Chess Tournament here on Sunday. The all-India match between D Gukesh and R Praggnananda ended in a draw while none of the other matches yielded any result.

Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi shared points with France’s Firoz Alireza while Azerbaijan’s Nizat Abbasov held America’s Fabiano Caruana to a draw. Now five rounds are left to be played in this biggest tournament of the year. Nepomniachtchi and Gukesh jointly top the list with 5.5 points out of a possible nine. Gyanananda is in third place with five points.

Nakamura, Gujarati and Caruana are jointly fourth with 4.5 points. Alireza is seventh with 3.5 points while Abbasov is eighth with three points. Vidit, who defeated Nakamura in the first half, repeated his success in the second half also. The all-India match between Gukesh and Praggnananda ended in a draw after 41 moves. Despite facing difficulties, Nepomniachtchi made a comeback against Alireza and was successful in drawing the match.

Abbasov also did not give any chance to Caruana while playing with white pieces and ultimately both players agreed to draw the game. R Vaishali’s hopes of making a comeback in the women’s category suffered a setback when she faced defeat against China’s Zhongyi Tan. This Chinese player has taken the solo lead with six points out of nine possible. Apart from the bet between Tan and Vaishali, no other bet had any result on Sunday.

India’s Koneru Humpy shared the points with Russia’s Katerina Legno, while yesterday’s leader Tingji Lei and Bulgaria’s Nurgul Selimova also had a draw. Ukraine’s Anna Muzychuk played a draw with Russia’s Alexandra Goryachkina. Tingjie and Goryachkina are tied for second place with 5.5 points, while Legno is half a point behind them in fourth place with five points. Selimova and Humpy are tied for fifth place with four points while Muzychik is placed seventh with 3.5 points. Vaishali is in eighth and last place with just 2.5 points.