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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