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Superbet Rapid and Blitz: India's grandmaster Praggnanandhaa finishes third
Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa finished third while Slovenia's Vladimir Fedoseev expectedly won the Superbet Rapid and Blitz tournament, an event on the Grand Chess tour.
Indian GM Aravindh Chithambaram did not see any change in his fortunes in the blitz section and had to be content with a tie for seventh place in his maiden outing in the GCT.
Fedoseev, who enjoyed a massive 3.5 points lead coming in to the final day, seemed unstoppable in the blitz section yet again scoring a massive 7.5/9 as he pocketed the winner's purse of USD 40,000. His overall score was 26.5 points out of a possible 36 in the event that offered two points for a win in rapid and one in blitz.
A distant second was Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France, who ended five points behind on 21.5 followed by Praggnanandhaa, who had 20.5 to his credit.
In the overall standings of the GCT, Vachier-Lagrave leads ahead of Praggnanandhaa while Fedoseev, a wild card, will have to wait for his turn to become a permanent invitee to the tour.
Vachier-Lagrave won USD 30,000 while Praggnanandhaa got richer by USD 25,000 from the event.
Levon Aronian, the import from Armenia to the United States, finished fourth on 20 points, 1.5 points clear of Frenchman Alireza Firouzja who was a half point clear of Deac Bogdan-Daniel of Romania.
Local hero Duda Jan-Kryzsztof was tied for the seventh place with Aravindh on 17 points, six points ahead of Romanian David Gavrilescu while former world champion Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria ended last, scoring 10 points in all.
Praggnanandhaa once again saw a reversal in fortunes in the second half of the day and finished with a flourish. Scoring just one point from the first five games, the Indian came back strongly to beat Duda, Topalov, Aravindh and Gavrilescu to finish the first event on a high. He scored 5 points out of a possible nine on the final day.
Fedoseev did not stop in his quest to win the maiden title in GCT and scored as many as seven victories on the final day.
His lone loss came against Duda which was also his only loss in the entire tournament spanning a total 27 games 9 in rapid and 18 in blitz.
The GCT will now move to Romanian capital Bucharest for the first Classical event that will see all the permanent nine tour players joining with a lone wild card.
From India, world champion D Gukesh will be seen in action once again along with Praggnanandhaa.
The event that starts from May 7, will also have American duo of Fabiano Caruana and Wesley So and Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan joining the fray.
Final Standings: 1. Vladimir Fedoseev (Slo) 26.5; 2. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra) 21.5; 3. R Praggnanandhaa (Ind) 20.5; 4: Levon Aronian (Usa) 20; 5. Firouzja Alireza (Fra) 18.5; 6. Deac Bogdan-Daniel (Rou) 18; 7-8: Duda Jan-Kryzsztof (Pol), Aravindh Chithambaran (Ind) 17 each. 9. David Gavrilescu (Rou) 11; 10. Veselin Topalov (Bul) 9.
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