World champion Gukesh Dommaraju managed to get a victory at last at the FIDE Grand Swiss tournament after a run of six games where he lost three games and drew three. Gukesh defeated Armenian grandmaster Gabriel Sargissian on Sunday in what was the Indian teenager’s third win at the Grand Swiss tournament in Samarkand. Gukesh also defeated French grandmaster Etienne Bacrot and Spanish GM Daniil Yuffa at the tournament but both those wins had come in the first three rounds at the event.
Since the win over Yuffa, Gukesh drew with compatriot Arjun Erigaisi before losing three games in a row to Abhimanyu Mishra (rating of 2611), Greek GM Nikolas Theodorou (2646), and Turkish teenage prodigy Ediz Gurel (2631). Gukesh had managed to arrest the spate of defeats by a hard-fought draw in a six-hour, 103-move draw with Divya Deshmukh. He was then held to a draw by another Armenian GM, Robert Hovhannisyan. Gukesh, playing with white pieces, managed to get a resignation out of Sargissian in 42 moves. It was a game where there was just one inaccuracy from the Armenian on move 22 (22… dxe3) which the world champion from Chennai exploited in incremental gains to eventually get a winning position by the time the resignation came.
INTERACTIVE: How Gukesh Dommaraju defeated Gabriel Sargissian
Vaishali’s Candidates hopes
Meanwhile, Vaishali Rameshbabu managed to get an important victory on Sunday over Ukraine’s Mariya Muzychuk in the penultimate round of the Women’s Grand Swiss to stay in joint lead of the standings along with Kateryna Lagno, with both players having 7.5 points. Vaishali faces former women’s world champion Tan Zhongyi in the final game of the tournament, with a spot in the FIDE Candidates tournament on the line. Vaishali is in the fray against three other players — Lagno, Song Yuxin and Bibisara Assaubayeva — for the two Candidates spot on offer.
INTERACTIVE: How Vaishali Rameshbabu defeated Mariya Muzychuk
“This is a very important win for me because if I had lost, I think I had no chance for tomorrow. I think in this tournament so far, this is the only game where I played badly and still I got this lucky point. My other wins were very smooth and convincing. The play could have been better of course, but whatever, I’ll take this win,” Vaishali told FIDE after the game ended.
In other significant results from the day, Praggnanandhaa was handed a defeat by Han Niemann while Arjun Erigaisi, Nihal Sarin and Vidit Gujrathi have managed to just half a point behind the five league leaders in the race for a Candidates spot. While Arjun, Nihal and Vidit still have a chance of qualifying for the Candidates through the Grand Swiss, they will need nothing short of multiple miracles to do so: while Matthias Bluebaum, Alireza Firouzja, Anish Giri, Hans Niemann and Vincent Keymer all have seven points after 10 games, the Indian trio has 6.5 points, which means not only will they have to win their games on Monday, but hope that the five leaders and the six other players who have 6.5 points like them all play out draws on Monday.
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