Sinquefield Cup: Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa begins tournament with draw against Samuel Sevian

Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa. Pic/AFP

Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa played out an easy draw with American counterpart Samuel Sevian in the first round of the Sinquefield Cup, the penultimate event of the Grand chess tour, that got underway here. The event this year saw top seed Fabiano Caruana emerge as early leader in the 10-player 9-rounds event as he put it across Jorden Van Foreest of Holland to open his account with a victory while the remaining games ended in draws.

World championship contender Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan split the point with Armenian turned American Levon Aronian while Vincent Keymer of Germany could not get past Wesley So of United States. Anish Giri of Holland also drew with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave France. For Praggnanandhaa it turned out to be a decent start as he gave nothing away as black against Sevian with the black pieces.

The Arkhengelsk variation in the Ruy Lopez gave an easy game to the Indian as Sevian too was in no mood to complicate matters too much. Also the preparation of the Indian proved to be better. By the 11th move itself a pair of rooks changed hands and the exchanges continued till the players reached a queen and minor piece endgame. With both players having two knights each, the result was a foregone conclusion and once the queens also got traded it was just a matter of time before the desired result was reached.

The game lasted 48 moves but it could have been drawn earlier. Caruana proved once again why he is best player of the tour thus far as he outwitted Foreest out of an equal position. The Dutchman simply blundered a pawn overlooking a tactic in the middle game and Caruana's technique was flawless in converting that into a full point after 55 moves. The USD 475000 prize money tournament saw Sindarov giving nothing away with his white pieces against Aronian as he opted for an irregular queen pawn set-up with his white pieces.

Aronian lost a pawn raising hopes for the Uzbek but the resulting endgame with Bishops of opposite colours was just a draw theoretically. Vincent Keymer had a similar story against Wesley So and his attempts to attack the black king were thwarted quiet easily while Anish Giri could make ne headways against Vachier-Lagrave and had to settle for a draw in a rook and pawns endgame that was fought till last nail.

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