New Delhi: It seemed to be a day for revenge in the seventh round of the inaugural AAI Grandmasters Chess Tournament as Filipino Welsey So and China's Hou Yifan on Wednesday avenged their earlier losses to Czech Viktor Laznicka and India's Parimarjan Negi respectively.
But in the third game which had a variation of the Kings Indian, Krishnan Sasikiran held the advantage for a good part of the game against tournament leader Fabiano Caruana, but the World Junior No. 1 hung in tenaciously and got himself a draw.
"I was worse in the opening but then had a chance. But in the end I suppose I made some mistake, I don't know. I thought I was winning for a while, but it was a see-saw," Sasi said. The game ended in a draw after 92 moves in seven hours.
In the second round of this tournament, when the same players were paired against each other, the whites had won and the same happened on Wednesday in two of the games and in the third white (Sasi) held advantage.
Sasikiran's draw brought him to four points along with Wesley So and Laznicka, while Caruana stayed as the only unbeaten player in the tournament and he now has 5.5 points and his lead stretched to 1.5 points with three rounds to go.
Wesley So needed just 31 moves in a Semi-Slav game against Viktor Lazincka to score his second win and it was the quickest decisive result of the tournament. That also pushed him into the second place with Laznicka and both have four points from seven rounds.
Women's world champion Hou Yifan took 62 moves for her win over Negi.
Laznicka's first mistake may well have been playing c5 instead of castling on the 17th and then he compounded it on 25th move with Kh8. That almost sealed his fate. It was only a matter of time after that and he resigned on the 31st.
The rain and the change in weather with much cooler temperatures not only brought a positive change in Wesley So's mood but also changed his fortunes. "When I looked out of the window during the game it was raining for a while. I love the weather to be cool and it did change my mood," said Wesley.
"It was a long wait for a win after the first one in the first round. In the past games I was not able to make much headway, maybe I was not good enough. Maybe I was not well prepared for India. I came from Sweden and I had not spent much time," said Wesley, who is World Junior No.4.
Yifan, who had just half a point in first five rounds, seems to be making some ground in the second half. After a draw in sixth round against Wesley So, she beat Negi in the seventh. "I think the rest day did me good," said Yifan, who went around the capital with her coach on the rest day. She has two points and that pushed Negi (1.5) to bottom of the table.
Negi continued to be out of form. The Indian national champion, who won second round against Yifan and then drew against Wesley So in third round, has now lost four games in a row and five in seven rounds.
In another third game India's Krishnan Sasikiran is playing tournament leader Fabiano Caruana of Italy.
There are three more rounds to go in the 10-round Category-17 tournament. The tournament comes to an end on Saturday.
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