• Home
• /
• Sports

Top two seeds share lead after six rounds in Dubai Open

GM Alexandr Predke of Russia and GM Arjun Erigaisi of India will fight for solo leadership in Friday's seventh round

The two highest-rated players of the tournament posted convincing wins on Thursday night to forge a two-way tie for lead after six rounds in the 22nd Dubai Open Chess Tournament at the Dubai Chess and Culture Club.

Grandmaster Arjun Erigaisi of India marked his first day as an official member of the exclusive 2700-rating club by taking down tournament leader GM Rinat Jumabayev of Kazakhstan, while top seed GM Alexandr Predke of Russia produced another miniature to beat FM Ayush Sharma, denying the upset-seeking Indian teenager a fourth straight GM victim in the tournament.

Both winners now have 5.5 points and will play each other for the pole position in Friday’s seventh round.

Erigaisi, who celebrates his 19th birthday on Saturday, rose to number 24 in the world with a rating of 2725 in the latest monthly rankings published by the International Chess Federation. And with his win on Thursday, the young Indian strengthened his bid for the top 10 as he pushed his live rating to 2735, 16th highest in the unofficial live rating list.

After exclusively playing e4 in all his white games here, Erigaisi switched d4 against Jumabayev, allowing the Kazakh to deploy his favoured Nimzo-Indian Defence, against which the Indian had prepared the Kmoch variation, where white goes for a big centre.

“It was very complicated, but I knew that in this kind of position white should go for some g4-g5 ideas, so I played it pretty confidently,” Erigaisi told Khaleej Times, explaining his decision to launch a pawn storm in the kingside.

But it was Jumabayev’s misadventure with his queen that led to his downfall.

“At some point he played this move Qh4, which I felt was an error,” said Erigaisi, criticising Jumabayev’s queen foray into black’s half of the board. “The follow-up to Qh4, which was Bd7, I think that was fatal.”

Predke, who had played the main line of the Ruy Lopez in both previous games where he had played black in the tournament, sprang a surprise on the Indian teenager by going for a seldom-seen sideline.

The ploy worked wonders as Sharma was caught unaware of the nuances of Ruy Lopez’s Cozio variation, going for an ill-advised pawn grab that quickly led to his downfall.

“Yes, it was a little bit of a surprise. I’m sure what he did was a bad idea because he missed that I can just sacrifice my pawn,” said Predke of the clever trap he had set.

After Sharma captured the free pawn on f7, Predke rolled out an attack against the white king that forced resignation just 10 moves later.

Jumabayev, meanwhile, remained at five points, sharing second place with four others – GM Akopian Vladimir of the US and Indian grandmasters Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Aravindh Chithambaram and Sahaj Grover.