Norwegian Chess: R Vaishali beats Pia Cramling, R Praggnanandhaa loses to Hikaru Nakamura

Indian Grandmaster R Vaishali continued his dream of defeating veteran GM Pia Cramling of Sweden, while his brother R Praggnanandhaa fell fighting Hikaru Nakamura of the US in the fourth round of the Norwegian chess tournament in Stavanger. Vaishali increased her lead to 2.5 points after her second victory under classical time control. The Indian now has 8.5 points and is followed by women’s world champion Wenjun Ju, from China, and Anna Muzychuk, from Ukraine.

Muzychuk defeated Koneru Humpy for his first tournament win, while Wenjun bested his compatriot Tingjie Lei at Armageddon.

With six rounds remaining in the six-player double round-robin tournament, Lei is in fourth place with five points, two points ahead of Humpy and Cramling.

In the men’s section, world number one Magnus Carlsen defeated arch-rival Fabiano Caruana of the United States on a day that saw all the decisive games under classical time control.

In the other game of the day, Firouzja Alireza of France defeated current world champion Ding Liren of China.

The US$1,61,000 prize money tournament has many more critical games to come, but at the end of the fourth round Nakamura advanced with seven points, enjoying a half-point lead over Alireza.

Carlsen is third with six points to his credit, while Praggnanandhaa has slipped to fourth position with 5.5 points. Caruana is in fifth place at this stage with five points, while Liren is a distant last with just 2.5 points so far.

Vaishali won thanks to her perseverance in a rook and drawn pawn endgame.

Playing on the dark side of a Grunfeld defense, the Chennai-based GM had little trouble equalizing and the players reached a heavy endgame in almost no time.

Cramling had to sort out his pawn structure problem a bit and this is where Vaishali thought he had a chance.

The game was still within the bounds of a draw when Cramling made a mistake and found himself facing a rook ending and lost pawns. The game lasted 54 moves.

Humpy lost to Muzychuk in a similar story. The end of the rook and pawn game should have been a draw, but a mistake by Humpy at the end sealed the fate of the game in Muzychuk’s favor.

This was Muzychuk’s first victory in classical chess in almost seven months.

In the men’s section, Nakamura took advantage of some unforced errors from Praggnanandhaa. The Indian’s defense of Nimzo resulted in a dynamic balance, but Praggnanandhaa became too optimistic in the resulting middlegame and sacrificed a knight.

The compensation, however, was not enough and Nakamura converted his extra material into a full point after 86 moves.

Carlsen defeated Caruana in a Queen and pawns ending. Outperforming your opponent from a balanced position has been a hallmark of Carlsen and this day was no different as he won thanks to a mistake from Caruana late in the game.

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