Esipenko delivers decisive win to prople Ganges Grandmaster back into the lead

The Ganges Grandmasters ended a troubling two-match slide with a narrow 8-7 win over the resurging Balan Alaskan Knights on Thursday to jump back into the joint leadership as the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League enters the final two days of the qualifying round matches at the Le Meridien hotel.

Grandmaster (GM) Andrey Esipenko delivered the decisive point for the Grandmasters on the prodigy board, overpowering GM Raunak Sadhwani, who had played the hero’s role in the Knights’ big win in the previous round.

With the Ganges Grandmasters playing the black pieces, Esipenko picked up four points for the win to give his team the early lead.

Three draws followed, including the “icon board” between Ganges’ GM Viswanathan Anand and Balan’s GM Ian Nepomniachtchi, before GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov, the top scorer for the Knights, won to give his team three more points, keeping the match close.

This meant it was up to the game between Ganges’ GM Bella Khotenashvili and the Knights’ GM Nino Batsiashvili to decide the match. Khotenashvili, who only needed a draw to secure the win for Ganges, emerged a pawn up from a tense middlegame battle, with the endgame reaching 114 moves before both players agreed to draw.

The Ganges Grandmasters now have 15 points from eight matches in a tie with GM Magnus Carlsen’s SG Alpine Warriors, although the Warriors have only played seven matches so far.

"The loss meant the Balan Alaskan Knights, who have only nine points from eight matches, are out of contention for the top two spots for the championship."

In the other match of the day, the Triveni Continental Kings pulled off a close 10-9 victory over the Chingari Gulf Titans in a must-win situation for both teams to stay in the tournament.

In one of the most explosive matches in the tournament, GM Levon Aronian led the Continental Kings with a win on the top board, beating GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda as Triveni stopped a two-match losing streak, while ending the Titans’ two-match run.

“We just told ourselves we haven’t been playing well, so we should take it one match at a time and see how it goes,” said Aronian. “We are so down on (game) points that we don’t even have any chance in the tiebreaks, so we have to win every single match, but (we’ll take it) one match at a time.”

GM Wei Yi and IM Sarasadat Khademalsharieh registered the other wins for Triveni, with Khademalsharieh delivering the deciding point against IM Polina Shuvalova in the match’s last game to finish.

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The Continental Kings now have nine points with three more matches to go, while the Gulf Titans are at the bottom with seven points.

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