R. Praggnanandhaa (Praggu) gave another evidence of his prowess when he nailed experienced campaigner and Ukraine No. 2 Pavel Eljanov to reach 2.5 points after three rounds of the Isle of Man International chess tournament on Monday.
Currently, the world’s third youngest Grandmaster in the all-time list, Praggu sacrificed his queen against a rival rated at 2703, against his own rating of 2519, and went on to gain a stronghold. Later, he displayed precise technique to prove his superiority in 64 moves.
With six players in lead with perfect scores, Praggu is part of the pack sharing the seventh spot at 2.5 points. At this stage, the youngster is half-a-point ahead of the leading even-numbered seeded players — Anish Giri, Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand and Hikaru Nakamura, among others.
Abhijeet Gupta gained a creditable draw with Boris Gelfand while all the other leading Indians were also involved in drawn encounters.
Anand drew once again, this time in just 24 moves against Germany’s Rasmus Svane while joint overnight leaders Vaibhav Suri and Vidit Gujarati shared the point.
Important third round results, involving Indians: Vaibhav Suri (2.5) drew with Vidit Gujarati (2.5); Abhijeet Gupta (2.5) drew with Boris Gelfand (2.5); Jeffery Xiong (US, 3) bt Vishnu Prasanna (2); Erwin L’ami (Ned, 3) bt Harsha Bharathakoti (2); Rasmus Svane (Ger, 2) drew with Viswanathan Anand (2); R. Praggnanandhaa (2.5) bt Pavel Eljanov (Ukr, 1.5).
M. Shyam Sundar (2) drew with Gawain Jones (Eng, 2); Prithu Gupta (1.5) lost to B. Adhiban (2.5); Fenil Shah (1) lost to Vladimir Kramnik (Rus, 2); Tamir Nabaty (Isr, 1.5) drew with Soumya Swaminathan (1.5); S.P. Sethuraman (2) bt James Tarjan (US, 1); Surya Shekhar Ganguly (1) lost to Georg Seul (Ger, 2); Tania Sachdev (1.5) drew with Bogdan-Daniel Deac (Rou, 1.5); Nihal Sarin (2) bt Rahul Srivatshav (1); Debashis Das (2) bt Lawrence Trent (Eng, 1).