Chess Super League R5: Krazy Knights, Quintessential Queens Knocked Out

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Pivotal Pawns, Kingslayers, Brutal Bishops, and Ruthless Rooks are the four teams that made it to the semifinals of the Chess Super League, to be played on Saturday. The two teams that were knocked out in the round-robin phase are Krazy Knights and Quintessential Queens.

Kingslayers vs. Quintessential Queens: 3-3

Bo.	Fed	3	Kingslayers	Rtg	3 – 3	Fed	6	Quintessential Queens	Rtg
1.1		GM	Sethuraman, S.P.	2620	½ – ½		GM	Karjakin, Sergey	2743
1.2		GM	Giri, Anish	2774	½ – ½		GM	Koneru, Humpy	2586
1.3		GM	Dzagnidze, Nana	2524	0 – 1		GM	Hou, Yifan	2658
1.4		IM	Soumya, Swaminathan	2351	1 – 0		IM	Tania, Sachdev	2392
1.5		GM	Gukesh, D	2640	1 – 0		GM	Iniyan, P	2529
1.6		WIM	Arpita, Mukherjee	2229	0 – 1		WIM	Priyanka, K	2218

The Kingslayers temporarily reached the top of the standings after their 3-3 with the Quintessential Queens, who were already out of contention. Interestingly, both lower-rated Indian players held the draw against their world-class opponents after the Kingslayers had chosen to swap their top boards.

GM Gukesh D. scored a nice win against GM Iniyan P., who tried the Volga/Benko Gambit:

Brutal Bishops vs. Ruthless Rooks: 3-3

Bo.	Fed	4	Brutal Bishops	Rtg	3 – 3	Fed	2	Ruthless Rooks	Rtg
2.1		GM	Vidit, Santosh Gujrathi	2726	½ – ½		GM	Radjabov, Teimour	2763
2.2		GM	Wang, Hao	2744	1 – 0		GM	Karthikeyan, Murali	2630
2.3		GM	Kosteniuk, Alexandra	2518	0 – 1		GM	Muzychuk, Anna	2533
2.4		IM	Karavade, Eesha	2345	0 – 1		GM	Harika, Dronavalli	2511
2.5		GM	Sadhwani, Raunak	2555	1 – 0		IM	Raja, Harshit	2494
2.6		WFM	Tarini, Goyal	2164	½ – ½		WFM	Salonika, Saina	2206

The Brutal Bishops and the Ruthless Rooks ended in third and fourth place after a 3-3 tie happened in this match as well. Also here, there was a swap on the top boards and it worked out well for the Bishops: GM Vidit Gujrathi held GM Teimour Radjabov to a draw and GM Wang Hao beat GM Murali Karthikeyan. White’s pawn grab on b4 didn’t give him much fun in this game:

Pivotal Pawns vs. Krazy Knights: 4-2

Bo.	Fed	5	Pivotal Pawns	Rtg	4 – 2	Fed	1	Krazy Knights	Rtg
3.1		GM	Gupta, Abhijeet	2628	1 – 0		GM	Nakamura, Hikaru	2736
3.2		GM	Ding, Liren	2799	1 – 0		GM	Sasikiran, Krishnan	2640
3.3		IM	Kulkarni, Bhakti	2388	0 – 1		GM	Muzychuk, Mariya	2536
3.4		GM	Abdumalik, Zhansaya	2507	1 – 0		WGM	Gomes, Mary Ann	2354
3.5		GM	Arjun, Kalyan	2537	0 – 1		GM	Aryan, Chopra	2585
3.6		WIM	Savitha, Shri B	2281	1 – 0		WIM	Mrudul, Dehankar	2256

With a win in the final round, the Pivotal Pawns ended up in first place on board points. After the triple draw drama the other day, the fifth round also saw one game where the arbiter had to step in. It involved GM Hikaru Nakamura’s game, whose win was turned into a loss! Let’s first look at it as there were some nice tactics involved:

The match ended in 3-3 initially but was later turned into 4-2 with a loss for Nakamura. What had happened?

According to commentator IM Sagar Shah, who spoke with the arbiter, Nakamura had a phone which rang during the game: “He put it on the side, he cut it, but the rulebook says you cannot have any electronic gadget around you, which is the reason why as per the regulations he was given a loss.”

Round 5 Standings

Rk.	Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	MP	BP
1	Pivotal Pawns		2½	3	3½	4	4	7	17,0
2	The Kingslayers	3½		1½	3½	4	3	7	15,5
3	Brutal Bishops	3	4½		3	2	3	5	15,5
4	Ruthless Rooks	2½	2½	3		4	3½	5	15,5
5	Krazy Knights	2	2	4	2		4	4	14,0
6	Quintessential Queens	2	3	3	2½	2		2	12,5

All games day 5

The Chess Super League will continue with the playoff and finals on Saturday and Sunday. The games are played with a time control of 15 minutes plus a 10-second increment. The total prize fund of the event is Rs.40 lakh (U.S. $54,000).

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