Freestyle Chess Grand Slam: Erigaisi reaches semifinals, Pragg out of title race

Las Vegas, July 18 (IANS) Grandmaster Arjun Erigaisi stormed into the semifinals of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour with a win over Uzbekistan's Nodirbek Abdusattorov, but R Praggnanandhaa bowed out of the title race after losing to USA's Fabiano Caruana at the USD 7,50,000 event.

Erigaisi defeated Abdusattorov 1.5-0.5 while Praggnanandhaa lost an 3-4 against Caruana.

In the only match of the Upper Bracket that didn’t go to tiebreaks, Erigaisi went through to the semifinals by winning the second 30+30 game. He was close to winning in the first as well, but Abdusattorov showed fantastic defense and just held on.

In the second game he couldn’t repeat that feat in a position an exchange down, which he had sacrificed early in the opening.

Praggnanandhaa-Caruana matchup saw an equally dramatic two 30+30 games, with Praggnanandhaa pouncing first with an excellent win with the white pieces. Caruana then leveled the score as he dominated his white game from the start and reached a piece-up endgame, but faced stiff opposition from his opponent – until Praggnanandhaa suddenly blundered his rook.

The scenario repeated itself but with reversed colors; Praggnanandhaa won the first 10+10 game as Black but failed to hold the next one as White. The next part of the tiebreak consisted of two 5+2 blitz games, and the first saw an absolutely wild time scramble where the eval bar went up and down and up and down until it was Caruana who emerged victoriously. The craziest game of the day.

In another must-win situation, Praggnanandhaa delivered. He ended up winning from a worse middlegame position, thus forcing the first Armageddon game of the tournament.

He bid 4:27 for playing Black, but was beaten by Caruana’s 4:02 so the latter got to play Black, with draw odds, and mentioned time on the clock against 5 minutes for White and only after move 60 an increment of 1 second per move. Caruana won a good game, showing strong nerves in timetrouble.

Meanwhile, Levon Aronian and Hans Moke Niemann of America were the other winners to make it to the Higher Bracket’s semifinals, alongside Caruana and Erigaisi.

In the Lower Bracket, Magnus Carlsen, Wesley So, Vincent Keymer and Leinier Dominguez emerged as the winners on Friday as they eliminated Vidit Gujrathi, Sam Sevian, Ray Robson and Bibisara Assaubayeva, respectively.

In the Upper Bracket, the pairings for the semifinals are Caruana vs Niemann and Aronianvs vs Erigaisi.

The losers in the Lower Bracket (Vidit, Sevian, Robson and Assaubayeva) have been eliminated and share 13th place. The winners (Carlsen, So, Keymer and Dominguez) move on to the Intermediate Matches Stage 1 where they will face the losers of the Upper Bracket quarterfinals.

There, the pairings in the lower bracket are; Praggnanandhaa vs Carlsen, Sindarov vs So, Nakamura vs Dominguez and Abdusattorov vs Keymer.

--IANS

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