Viswanathan Anand came up with a queen-sacrifice on way to a resounding victory over Germany’s Nikolas Lubbe and moved within half-a-point of the four-man leaders’ group after three rounds of Isle of Man chess tournament here on Monday.
Anand’s second victory took him to 2.5 points, same as 18 others including compatriots S. P. Sethuraman, Vidit Gujrathi, Swapnil Dhopade and D. Harika in the joint fifth spot. World champion Magnus Carlsen (Norway), Pavel Eljanov (Ukraine), Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Uzbekistan) and Aleksandr Lenderman (USA) lead with three points.
Among the Indians, several lesser-rated players came out undefeated against higher-ranked rivals. Nihal Sarin held 16th seed Emil Sutovsky, rated 2683, National junior champion Harsha Bharathakoti took half point off 23rd seed Gawain Jones (2668), Harika drew with Sweden’s Nils Grandelius (2653), C. R. G. Krishna proved equal to 29th seed Gabriel Sargissian (2652) and Eesha Karavade split the point with 48th seed Dennis Wagner (2565).
The results (involving Indians):
Third round: Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Uzb, 3) bt S. L. Narayanan (2); Julio Granda Zuniga (Per, 2.5) drew with Swapnil Dhopade (2.5); D. Harika (2.5) drew with Nils Grandelius (Swe, 2.5); Fabiano Caruana (USA, 2.5) bt Vishnu Prasanna (1.5); Viswanathan Anand (2.5) bt Nikolas Lubbe (Ger, 1.5); Vidit Gujrathi (2.5) bt Michael William Brown (USA, 1.5); Emil Sutovsky (Isr, 2) drew with Nihal Sarin (2); Gawain Jones (Eng, 2) drew with Harsha Bharathakoti (2); Gabriel Sargissian (Arm, 2) drew with C. R. G. Krishna (2); S. P. Sethuraman (2.5) bt Andrew Ledger (Eng, 1.5); B. Adhiban (2) bt Evgeny Degtiarev (Ger, 1); Sebastian Bogner (Sui, 2) bt Raja Harshit (1); R. Vaishali (1) lost to Alan Pichot (Arg, 2); Dennis Wagner (Ger, 1.5) drew with Eesha Karavade (1.5); Ojas Kulkarni (1.5) drew with R. Praggnanandhaa (1.5); P. Magesh Chandran (2) bt Fenil Shah (1); Anila L’ami (Rou, 2) bt N. R. Visakh (1); Neelotpal Das (2) bt Stephen Jessel (Irl, 1); Lev Yankelevich (Ger, 1) lost to K. Rathnakaran (2); S. Kidambi (1.5) drew with Anna Rudolf (Hun, 1.5).