Arjun-Nakamura draw after topsy-turvy game

Bengaluru: In a topsy-turvy encounter that saw both players miss winning chances, Arjun Erigaisi and Hikaru Nakamura drew their first quarter-final game in the Paris leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour. They will play their second classical game on Thursday and Arjun will have the Black pieces. In case of another draw, the winner will be determined in a playoff.

The lone Indian to make the knockouts, Arjun, playing White, was a pawn up and his position looked promising out of the opening. Nakamura pinned his miserable plight early in the game to Ian Nepomniachtchi’s suggestion in the pre-game huddle.

“I was probably lost out of the opening,” Nakamura said, “I guess the moral of the story is never trust a Russian…Nepo said that f5-g6-Nxg6 are all great and fine and quite a few of us played it. Arjun was pretty principled and just took the pawn. For pretty much the first hour and a half I literally just wanted to get up from my board and just go strangle Nepo… you end up being biased when you start being influenced by other people.”

Thankfully for Nakamura, Arjun – two pawns up and looking pleased with himself – frittered away a chunk of his advantage with 20. Rg1. Nakamura, with an edge on the clock, managed to find his way back and seemed to have a close to decisive advantage. With little time on his clock though, Arjun held his nerves, put up a resistance and eventually saw it through to a draw.

“The good thing about classical is that it rarely comes down to some crazy blunder,” Nakamura said, “whoever has the better plan usually wins the game. Arjun had a chance to win the game and he missed it…I can be unhappy, I can be happy but I think it wasn’t a clean winning chance (for me).”

Earlier, by virtue of topping the round-robin standings, Nepomniachtchi got the choice of picking his opponent first for the two-game classical quarterfinal match. He chose the Black pieces and German GM Vincent Keymer. Arjun, who finished fourth in the round robin didn’t have to make a choice since Nakamura was the only remaining player among those placed 5-8.

“Probably it’s a bit of an advantage (to be a creative player in Freestyle), because sometimes in classical chess I have to go out of my way and accept some worse positions to make it complicated. While here (Freestyle chess) on move 1 or 2 itself most of the time, it’s complicated,” Arjun pointed out.

Position 841 – which had both bishops placed on the central d and e files – was chosen for the day, and the only decisive result in day 1 of the quarter final stage on Wednesday was world No 1 Magnus Carlsen was walking away with a win against Nodirbek Abdusattorov with the White pieces.

Results (Quarterfinal): Nepomniachtchi drew Keymer; Carlsen beat Abdusattorov; Maxime Vachier-Lagrave drew Caruana; Arjun drew Nakamura

9-12th place: Praggnanandhaa R beat Vidit Gujrathi; Richard Rapport beat Gukesh D