India’s highest-rated chess player GM Arjun Erigaisi continued his top run as he dominated the 10-player field to win the Stepan Avagyan Memorial 2024 on Monday in Jermuk, Armenia, with a round to spare.
Arjun beat Russia’s Volodar Murzin with white pieces in 63 moves to end the penultimate round (eight) with six points, a full 1.5 points ahead of the three-player deadlock on second position with 4.5 points.
With four wins and as many draws in eight rounds, Arjun accounted for 9 Elo rating points; his live rating of 2779.9 took him to world no. four behind Magnus Carlsen of Norway, USA’s Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana.
The 20-year-old will face the local lad Manuel Petrosyan in the last round of the single round-robin tournament.
Earlier, the Warangal lad’s strong showing in the French Team Chess Championship helped him reach the top five in the FIDE standings, making him the highest-ranked Indian.
Arjun has been in fine form over the past few months, finishing second in the TePe Sigeman Chess Tournament and had finished joint-fifth in the Sharjah Masters Open Tournament. He also won the Menorca Open crown in April by edging out GMs Kirill Alekseenko and Maksim Chigaev.
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