S.P. Sethuraman held Sergey Karjakin while Vidit Gujarati and B. Adhiban scored much-needed victories to join Viswanathan Anand in the joint seventh spot at 5.5 points after the eighth and penultimate round of the Isle of Man International chess tournament in Douglas on Saturday.
After Anand drew with Valdislav Artemiev in 32 moves, Sethuraman earned a 43-move draw with black pieces. Vidit proved his superiority over Germany’s Rasmus Svane in 29 moves. Adhiban gradually outplayed Johan-Sebastian Christiansen in 58 moves following an endgame involving a rook each and pawns.
The title-race saw two exciting decisive games with Arkadij Naiditsch upsetting Hikaru Nakamura and Radoslaw Wojtaszek stopping Michael Adams to reach 6.5 points. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Wang Hao drew their top-table clash. Jeffery Xiong, the other overnight leader, held Vladimir Kramnik.
The day turned out to be a tough one for the top-10 seeds. Besides Nakamura, top seed Levon Aronian ended up losing after running into British-hope Gawain Jones. Apart from Vachier, Kramnik, Anand and Karjakin, those held to draws included Anish Giri, Wesley So and Alexander Grischuk, seeded second, fifth and seventh, in that order.
Important eighth-round results, involving Indians:
Viswanathan Anand (5.5) drew with Valdislav Artemiev (Rus, 5.5); Sergey Karjakin (Rus, 5.5) drew with S. P. Sethuraman (5.5); Rasmus Svane (Rus, 4.5) lost to Vidit Gujarati (5.5); Abhijeet Gupta (5) drew with David Howell (5); B. Adhiban (5.5) bt Johan-Sebastian Christiansen (Nor, 4.5); Samuel Sevian (USA, 5) drew with R. Praggnanandhaa (5); Simon Williams (Eng, 5) drew with Surya Shekhar Ganguly (5); S. Kidambi (4.5) lost to Daniel Fridman (Ger, 5.5); Nigel Short (4.5) drew with D. Gukesh (5); C. R. G. Krishna (4.5) drew with George Meier (Ger, 4.5); R. Vaishali (4) lost to Nihal Sarin (4); Raja Harshit (4) drew with Vaibhav Suri (4).
