CHENNAI: Vantika Agrawal pulled a colony of rabbits from her hat to keep the women’s team withing handshaking distance of team gold at the ongoing Chess Olympiad in Budapest. Up against the US team, one of the front-runners behind the Indian side for a shot at gold, they were trailing 1-2 after R Vaishali resigned.
But Agrawal, on the third board, found the winning combination against the more experienced Irina Krush, a GM, to finish the day 2-2. It means the two teams share the match points before the final two rounds. India began the day on 14 points, level with Poland and Kazakhstan and a point ahead of US. With two more teams in the vicinity (Armenia & Ukraine), there’s a lot to play for in the final two rounds.
The stakes, if anything, was even higher in the Open match where the team was involved in a long, gruelling fight against Uzbekistan, 2022 gold medallists. With the team in sole lead by two points in front of Uzbekistan coming into the round, perhaps the position was more focused on holding what they had rather than risky play.
While the team doesn’t actively play to lose, it wasn’t hard to draw that conclusion, especially when Vidit Gujrathi, on Board 4, had a very quick draw. Both R Praggnanandhaa and D Gukesh, in a battle of prodigies with Nodirbek Abdusattorov, drew to make it 1.5-1.5 with Arjun Erigaisi fighting to bring home a big win.
In a proper knife-fight with a lot of posturing and not a lot of blood-drawing, both Erigaisi and Shamsiddin Vokhidov did a lot of walking around egg-shells to try and lay traps. But the person sitting on the opposite side of the table was up to task. Erigaisi had a small window of opportunity but didn’t see the line and that opportunity was lost. In the end, Vokhidov had a marginal advantage but couldn’t convert so truce was signed.