Chess Olympiad: Gukesh on a roll as India ‘B’ shock USA

Teenaged Grandmaster D Gukesh shocked world No.5 Fabiano Caruana as India ‘B’ pulled off a superb 3-1 win over No.2 seeds USA in the eighth round of the Open section of the 44th Chess Olympiad in Mamallapuram on Saturday.

Gukesh is enjoying a purple patch and his victory over Caruana was his eighth on the trot in the tournament and helped improve his live ratings. He moved up to second behind the legendary Viswanathan Anand in live ratings.

His splendid run has been the key behind the success of the India ‘B’ team, seen by many as the darkhorse of the championship.

Fellow teen and GM Raunak Sadhwani (Elo 2611) stunned higher rated GM Linier Dominiguez Perez (Elo 2754) in 45 moves as India ‘B’ shut out USA. GMs Nihal Sarin and R Praggnanandhaa drew their games against Levon Aronian and Wesley So respectively.

In another match in the Open event, India ‘C’ was trailing 0.5-2.5 against Peru with Surya Shekhar Ganguly going down to lower-rated Emilio Cordova and Abhijeet Gupta losing to Renato Terry.

On the top board, India ‘A’, seeded two, was level with the leaders Armenia with GMs Vidit Santosh Gujrathi and S L Narayanan drawing against Hrant Melkumyan and Robert Hovhannisyan.

In the women’s event, the top-seeded India ‘A’ and Ukraine were level at 1.5-1.5 with Koneru Humpy, D Harika and Tania Sachdev having drawn against Mariya Muzychuk, Anna Muzychuk and Natalia Buksa respectively.

India ‘C’ crashed to a 1-3 defeat to Poland, while the India ‘B’ team rode on wins by Vantika Agrawal, Padmini Rout and Divya Deshmukh to rout Croatia 3.5-1.5.