In the most sensational third round of the FIDE World Cup, reigning World Champion Dommaraju Gukesh was eliminated by Frederik Svane of Germany in Goa.
Fourth-seed Dutchman Anish Giri was also knocked out by Alexander Donchenko and eighth-seed Nodirbek AbduSattorov was also sent packing by Jose Martinez. This was one of the most brutal rounds where the top seeds succumbed to players rated much below them.
Arjun Erigaisi, R Praggnanandhaa, Pranav Venkatraman and Pentala Harikrishna brought some cheer to the Indian camp by advancing to the fourth round of the 206-player knock-out event. Pragg, who had so far been struggling for survival since his entry in the second round, found his rhythm on the day playing a neat game to defeat Shamsiddin Vakhidov.
Out of the 10 Indians in the third round, four have advanced, three are knocked out and three of them will play the tie-break.
SL Narayan will feature in his third consecutive tie-break against Yu Yangyi of China as will Vidit Gujrathi and Karthik Venkataraman, all three Indians having drawn both their classical encounters.
Diptayan Ghosh and M Pranesh ended on the losing side after holding fancied players in the round before and were eliminated. Both of the Indians had a good run in this event.
Gukesh, however, has been in poor form in the last few events and on Saturday too was far from impressive with the white pieces in the Italian opening game. Svane, in severe time pressure, handled the situation rather well and showed ambition in a knight and pawn ending to win after 55 moves.
“This is the first time that I have played such a tough player and to defeat the World Champion Gukesh is something which I had never even thought of," said Svane.
Pranav drew against Titas Stremavicius to advance to the fourth courtesy of Friday's victory. The draw was signed after 41 moves of a Queen’s Gambit Declined game. After the victory, Pranav played patiently without taking any risk, his pieces venturing out of his territory only to initiate exchanges.
Pragg won after 42 moves, getting an advantage in the middle-game. In the end, he had a bishop pair for a rook with queens gracing the board and Pragg's pawn which had marched all the way to the 7th rank.
Arjun Erigaisi was involved in an Italian opening game against Vokhidov and the draw was sealed after 51 moves with just rooks and pawns on the board.
Results (Round 3.2): GM Frederik Svane (GER) bt GM D Gukesh; GM Arjun Erigaisi drew with GM Shamsiddin Vokhidov (UZB); GM Robert Hovhannisyan lost to GM R Praggnanandhaa; GM Pranav Venkatesh drew with GM Titas Stremavicius (LTU); GM Vincent Keymer (GER) bt M Pranesh M; GM Diptayan Ghosh lost to GM Gabriel Sargissian (ARM); GM SL Narayanan drew with GM Yangyi Yu (CHN); GM Sam Shankland (USA) drew with GM Vidit Gujrathi; 1-1; GM Karthik Venkataraman drew with GM Bogdan-Daniel (ROU); GM Pentala Harikrishna drew with GM Daniel Dardha (BEL).