NIHAL Sarin overturned a losing position to hand the Indian open team a crucial win on Day Two of the chess Olympiad in Samarkand in Uzbekistan. Facing a plucky Indonesia outfit, the defending champions were struggling for an opening in all four boards when Sarin, playing in only his second OTD Olympiad, was struggling for any kind of momentum with the white pieces.
Out of the opening, he was clearly worse after a blunder: 16. g5. As soon as Arif Hafiz capitalised on the error, the Indian was fighting against the tide. He followed that with another blunder in the middlegame — 21. g6 — but Hafiz opted to not drive his queen to the heart of Sarin's weakness; the exposed c2 pawn. There was another blunder but both players traded errors after that and Sarin refocused to restore some parity to the position.
And after he brought his rooks into the game, he sacrificed one of them — a brilliancy — to get a stranglehold in the encounter. Post that, he set up a queen, rook battery in the open d file and began harassing the opponent's king. After that, a resignation followed. As soon as Sarin won, players on the other boards ensured for calm and serenity in their own boards, including D Gukesh who opted not to push in an equal position. His draw, however, against IM Satria Cahaya, a player rated almost 300 points below him, means the world champion is now below 2700 in the live ratings.
Big win for women's team
The Indian women's team, also defending champions, were pretty much locked in from the get go during their match against Finland. With Koneru Humpy sitting out, the onus fell on India's next gen to bring home the wins and they didn't disappoint in a show of strength. All three of Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agrawal and Savitha Shri converted dominating positions to outright wins. R Vaishali drew her game. Especially in the light of some of the other matches where one major power stumbled — Georgia could only draw Montenegro — this was an important result even though it's still very early days.
Results: Open: India 2-0 Indonesia (R Praggnanandhaa drew with S Megaranto, N Sarin bt A Hafiz, D Gukesh drew with S Cahaya, V Gujrathi drew with N Budhidharma); Women: India 2-0 Finland (R Vaishali drew with A Keinanen, D Deshmukh bt J Paasikangas-Tella, V Agrawal bt SO Sippola, Savitha S bt H Lehtinen).
