Budapest, Sep 18 (PTI) Grandmaster R Vaishali and Vantika Agrawal came up with splendid efforts to down Lela Javakhishvili and Bella Khotenashvili respectively as Indian women’s team continued its unbeaten run with a thumping 3-1 victory over Georgia at the 45th Chess Olympiad here on Wednesday. Indian women have now all their seven rounds.
On a day that saw D Harika settling for a draw with Nana Dzagnidze, Divya Deshmukh held by Nino Batsiashvili from a better position, it was Vantika, who handled her time pressure extremely well to play almost 20 moves with just about a minute on her clock to win her game.
It was finally left to Vaishali to record a fine technical win to hand the women’s team its seventh straight win.
The Indian women took their tally to an impressive 14 points out of a possible 14 and stayed ahead of nearest rival Poland that was about to register a victory over Ukraine.
In the open section, Indian men drew on the last three boards after some intense games and World Championship finalist D Gukesh was still trying to win a drawn endgame against Wei Yi of China.
Speculation were rife about a possible clash between Gukesh and Ding Liren – the two contestants in the next World Championship for a final showdown ahead of their match in Singapore but the Chinese think tank decided to rest the reigning world champion. That was a shock for the pundits of the game.
R Praggnanandhaa played out a quick draw as black against Yangyi Yu of China while P Harikrishna pressed for sometime before the position petered out to be equal in the ensuing rook and pawns endgame.
Earlier Arjun went for the kill against an alert Bu Xiangzhi and the latter found a nice piece sacrifice to force a draw through repetition. PTI CORR KHS KHS
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