Surya Shekhar Ganguly served a timely reminder of his skills in rapid chess by winning all four rounds on Thursday to share the lead at five points with D. Gukesh after seven rounds of AICF World Cup qualifier chess tournament on Thursday.
Strung by the loss to Gukesh on Wednesday, Ganguly resurrected his campaign by beating joint overnight leader Raja Rithvik, Krishnan Saravana, Grandmasters Deep Sengupta and S.P. Sethuraman.
Like Ganguly on Wednesday, Gukesh received a bye on Thursday and raised his tally off draws against Rithvik and Deep and in between defeated Saravana.
Though Sethuraman and S.L. Narayanan have also tallied five points, they have played a round more than Ganguly and Gukesh.
Adhiban sturggles
Strangely, top seed B. Adhiban continued to struggle. After a winning start to the day at Soumya Swaminathan’s expense, Adhiban dramatically lost to fellow GM Vishnu Prasanna who was yet to score from four previous rounds. Adhiban did win against lowly Rahul Vatsal but drew against C.R.G. Krishna.
Gukesh, Aditya, Rithvik and Iniyan received byes, in that order, on Thursday.
Standings (after day two): 1-4. Surya Shekhar Ganguly, D. Gukesh, S.L. Narayanan, S.P. Sethuraman (5 points each), 5-6. P. Iniyan, Raja Rithvik (4.5 each), 7. Deep Sengupta (4), 8-10. Rahul Srivatshav, S. Nitin, B. Adhiban (3.5 each), 11-13. Aditya Mittal, Soumya Swaminathan, Saravana Krishnan (2.5 each), 14. C.R.G. Krishna (2), 15-17. Vishnu Prasanna, Vatsal Singhania and M. Vinay Kumar. (1 each).
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