Gukesh suffers shock defeat to van Foreest in Prague International chess festival

D Gukesh

World Champion D Gukesh suffered a shock defeat to Jorden van Foreest of Holland, while Aravindh Chithambaram played out a draw with Parham Maghsoodloo of Iran in the third round of the Masters section of Prague International chess festival here. Still looking for his first victory in the tournament, Gukesh never really found his footing against van Foreest, who, playing white, employed the Ruy Lopez and seized the initiative early with the bishop pair in the Tartakower variation.

The Indian soon came under heavy pressure and had to part with a pawn. The technicalities remained but Foreest could possibly do no-wrong in this round. The trade of Queens led to a pawn-less rook and minor piece endgame for Gukesh wherein the Dutchman cleaned up the king side and his pawns did the remaining. The game lasted 48 moves. Foreest regained the joint lead and is the only player in the event with all three decisive games. With two points in his kitty, Foreest shares the lead with Uzbek duo of Nodirbek Yakubboev and Nodirbek Abdusattorov along with local favourite David Navara. With six rounds still remaining in the 10-players 9-rounds tournament, Gukesh shares the seventh spot with top seed Vincent Keymer of Germany, Hans Moke Niemann of United States and Maghsoodloo with all having one point from their three games.

The other Indian in the fray, Aravindh played out a draw with Maghsoodloo to take his tally to 1.5 points along with David Anton Guijarro of Spain. Aravindh could not really get going with his white pieces against Maghsoodloo after going for a strange variation against the Caro Kann defense. The queens were off the board as early as the fifth move, after which Maghsoodloo only had to trade pieces at regular intervals. The game ended in a draw in just 30 moves by repetition. In the challengers' section, it was a double blow for Indians as both Divya Deshmukh and Surya Shekhar Ganguly went down fighting. The women's World cup winner Divya lost with her black pieces against Jiner Zhu of China, while Ganguly found a tough customer in Czech republic's Jachym Nemec. Ganguly has a half point after the first three rounds, while Divya has one. Finek Vaclav of Czech Republic leads this section with 2.5 points.

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