Arjun Erigaisi, who is known as India's highest-rated player, will start as the favourite against Hungarian chess grandmaster Peter Leko
Arjun Erigaisi (Pic: File Pic)
India's star grandmasters Arjun Erigaisi, R Praggnanandhaa and P Harikrishna will aim to continue their dominating form as the fourth round of the FIDE World Cup begins after the first rest day.
Arjun Erigaisi, who is known as India's highest-rated player, will start as the favourite against Hungarian chess grandmaster Peter Leko.
On the other hand, Praggnanandhaa will lock horns against Daniil Dubov, who is featuring in the event under the FIDE flag. The most experienced player of the trio, Harikrishna, will take on Sweden's Nils Grandelius, as he will be aiming to stay in the contention.
Leko, who has been a formidable force for over 20 years, has been giving glimpses of his prime. But he may not find things easy against the Indian star, Erigaisi, who is known to go for extreme complexities.
The 46-year-old defeated Bobby Cheng of Australia and Kirill Alekseenko of Austria without any tiebreak games, which speaks volumes about his quality of play. Leko is a semi-retired player, and his student, Vincent Keymer of Germany, is also in the fourth round, making it a rare case of 'Guru and Shisya' going deep in a knockout competition.
Erigaisi has been dominating in the tournament so far. He has won both of his matches without any tiebreaks. So far under the classical time control, the 22-year-old player has won three out of his four matches. He has defeated Martin Petrov of Bulgaria and Shamsiddin Vokhidov of Uzbekistan in the process.
Crowd favourite, India's R Praggnanandhaa, meanwhile, is set to meet Dubov, known for his work as a theoretician. The Russian is also a dangerous opponent in the faster time control. He came through two tiebreak marathons against Bai Jinshi of China and Georg Meier of Uruguay, excelling due to speed and accuracy.
He was about to crash out in his first outing in the second round, but somehow managed to survive in the tiebreaker against Uzbek-Australian Temur Kuybokarov.
Harikrishna had a smooth sailing to the round of 32 after registering dominating wins against Arseniy Nesterov of Russia and Daniel Dardha of Belgium.
(With PTI Inputs)
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