At the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands, Indian star Gukesh Dommaraju drew with World No. 2 Fabiano Caruana of the USA in Round 3 yesterday. Gukesh remains unbeaten after becoming the youngest world champion in history last month in Singapore.
In other matches, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa defeated World No. 4 and compatriot Arjun Erigaisi while playing with the white pieces, climbing to the top of the points table alongside Uzbekistan’s Nodirbek Abdusattorov, both tied at 2.5 points each. Another Indian, Leon Luke Mendonca, bounced back from two consecutive defeats to
draw with compatriot Pentala Harikrishna.
In the Challengers section, both Indian players, Vaishali Rameshbabu and Divya Deshmukh, suffered defeats.
In today’s Round 4 fixtures, Gukesh will face Alexey Sarana of Russia, Praggnanandhaa will play against compatriot Mendonca, and Arjun Erigaisi will take on Vladimir Fedoseev of Russia.
The tournament features a fourteen-player, single round-robin format, consisting of 13 rounds where each player faces every other player once.