Chess Olympiad: Indian teams seal seventh successive wins

Grandmaster R Vaishali and Vantika Agrawal came up with splendid efforts to down Lela Javakhishvili and Bella Khotenashvili, respectively, as Indian women’s team continued its unbeaten run with a thumping 3-1 victory over Georgia at the 45th Chess Olympiad here on Wednesday. The Indian women have now all their seven rounds.

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On a day that saw D Harika settling for a draw with Nana Dzagnidze, Divya Deshmukh held by Nino Batsiashvili from a better position, it was Vantika who handled her time pressure extremely well to play almost 20 moves with just about a minute on her clock to win her game.

It was finally left to Vaishali to record a fine technical win. The Indian women took their tally to 14 points and stayed ahead of nearest rival Poland.

In the open section, the Indian men drew on the last three boards after some intense games and World Championship finalist D Gukesh won a drawn endgame against Wei Yi of China to give the team its seventh successive victory.

Speculation was rife about a possible clash between Gukesh and Ding Liren — the two contestants in the next World Championship — but the Chinese think tank decided to rest the reigning world champion.

R Praggnanandhaa played out a quick draw as black against Yangyi Yu of China while P Harikrishna pressed for some time before the position petered out to be equal in the ensuing rook and pawns endgame against Wang Yue.

Earlier, Arjun went for the kill against an alert Bu Xiangzhi and the latter found a nice piece sacrifice to force a draw through repetition.