Tbilisi (Georgia): Grandmasters Vidit Gujrathi and SP Sethuraman bowed out of the chess World Cup after defeats against Ding Liren of China and Anish Giri of Holland respectively in the tie-break games of the third round here Monday.
The ouster of the last two remaining Indians ended the challenge in the biennial event. In the earlier rounds, Viswanathan Anand, B Adhiban, P Harikrishna, Murali Karthikeyan and Deep Sengupta had lost.
Sethuraman was quite unlucky as he failed to convert a winning position against Anish Giri under normal time control. The rapid tie-breaker was evenly matched as Giri won the first game and Sethuraman equalised but once it reached the 10-minute game, Giri was a cut above as he first won with white piece and then was spot on to find counter play and win another game as black.
It was a tough battle for Gujrathi in the rapid tie-break games. After drawing the first game, the Indian was looking fine in the second rapid game but Liren came up with a fine plan to win a piece.
While the position was still volatile, the Chinese was quite up to the task in converting his extra material into a full point. Gujrathi lost the tie by a 1.5-2.5 margin.
The third round in fact witnessed the biggest chunk of upsets in this World Cup as World Champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway and highly-regarded Vladimir Kramnik of Russia and Hikaru Nakamura of United States bowed out of the competition.
For Carlsen it was a tough call to win with black on demand against BU Xiangzhi of China and the Chinese drew quite effortlessly to sail in to the next round under normal game itself.
The shocker was the ouster of Kramnik at the hands of former star Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine while Nakamura fell prey to some adventurous play against Vladimir Fedoseev of Russia.
Press trust of India
