Praggnanandhaa bounces back to jump to second spot

Warsaw (Poland), Apr 30 (PTI) Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa bounced back from a poor start to climb to second in the overall standings at the end of the first half of the blitz section in the Superbet Rapid & Blitz tournament, part of the Grand Chess Tour.

Praggnanandhaa’s efforts held him in good stead for a second day running. The Indian had not done well on the first two days of rapid chess but has come back strongly especially showing his expertise in the blitz section.

With just five minutes given for each game and a three seconds increment after every move is made, Praggnanandhaa played his usual brand of complicated games and ended with three straight wins.

He had started with losses to Deac Bogdan-Daniel of Romania and Levon Aronian of United States but then recovered to beat Firouzja Alireza of France and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.

In the last three rounds, Praggnanandhaa put it across former world champion Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, Aravindh and David Gavrilescu of Romania to collect score 5.5 points out of allotted nine games.

On a day when Indian GM Aravindh Chithambaram ran a bit out of steam and could only garner 3.5 points from his nine games, Vladimir Fedoseev of Slovenia cruised to a brilliant 8/9 on the penultimate day and took his tally to a massive 19 points out of a possible 27.

Fedoseev’s dominance started right from the beginning now enjoys a huge 3.5 points lead over second place Praggnanandhaa.

Unless there is a massive change in the fortunes of other players, the overall first place seems almost decided for which 4.5 points should be enough for Fedoseev in the remaining nine games slated on the final day.

Aravindh started of with 2.5 points from first four games and then could only get one point from the last five.

He will have to fight hard in the second half of blitz in order to finish what he started so well – tying for first place in the rapid section.

Standings after nine rounds rapid and blitz: 1. Vladimir Fedoseev (Slo) 19; 2. R Praggnanandhaa (Ind, 15.5); 3-5: Aravindh Chithambaran (Ind), Levon Aronian (Usa); Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra) 14.5 each; 6. Firouzja Alireza (Fra) 14; 7-8: Duda Jan-Kryzsztof (Pol), Deac Bogdan-Daniel (Rou) 13 each; 9. David Gavrilescu (Rou) 9; 10. Veselin Topalov (Bul) 8.