FIDE World Cup: Arjun leads India’s charge, Pragg and Harikrishna ready for big rests in round 4

Panjim: India’s leading Grandmasters Arjun Erigaisi, R Praggnanandhaa and P Harikrishna will look to continue their impressive run when the fourth round of the FIDE World Cup gets underway here after the first rest day.

Arjun, the country’s highest-rated player, will start as the favourite against veteran Hungarian Peter Leko, while Praggnanandhaa faces the inventive Daniil Dubov, who is playing under the FIDE flag. Harikrishna, the most experienced of the trio, takes on Sweden’s Nils Grandelius as he aims to stay firmly in contention.

Leko, a formidable force about 20 years back, is showing signs of his prime but may not find things easy against Arjun, who likes to go for extreme complexities.

The 46-year-old defeated Bobby Cheng of Australia and Kiriil Alekseenko of Austria without any tiebreak games which speaks volumes about his quality of play.

Incidentally, Leko is a semi-retired player and his protégé Vincent Keymer of Germany is also in the fourth round, making it a rare case of ‘Guru and Shisya’ going deep in a knockout competition.

Arjun won both his matches without any tiebreak. The Indian has won three out of his four games thus far under the classical time control and has shown the exit door to Martin Petrov of Bulgaria and Shamsiddin Vokhidov of Uzbekistan in the process.

Crowd favourite R Praggnanadhaa, meanwhile, is set to meet Dubov, known for his work as a theoretician. The Russian is also a dangerous opponent in the faster time control. He came through two tiebreak marathons against Bai Jinshi of China and Georg Meier of Uruguay, excelling due to speed and accuracy.

Praggnanadhaa was close to being eliminated in his first outing in the second round itself but somehow survived in the tiebreaker against Uzbek-Australian Temur Kuybokarov before prevailing over his third-round rival Robert Hovhannisyan of Armenia.

Harikrishna, on the other hand, had a smooth sailing to the round of 32 with comprehensive victories over Arseniy Nesterov of Russia and Daniel Dardha of Belgium.

Win with white and draw with black has been the mantra for Harikrishna, who would rely on his immense experience to get the better off Grandelius in the fourth round.

World junior champion V Pranav and 109th seed Venkatraman Karthik have also impressed, reaching the fourth round after playing three matches each. Arjun, Praggnanandhaa and Harikrishna were directly seeded to the second round when they started their campaign.

Defeating Algerian Ada Eddine Boulrens and Norwegian Aryan Tari in the first two rounds, Pranav came up with a stellar show against Titas Stremavicius of Lithuania and won the first game itself.

Needing just a draw in the return game, Pranav had no difficulties.

Karthik's victims include Aravindh Chithambaram and Deac Bogdan Daniel so far and the Indian will be hoping for his best games against Le Quang Liem of Vietnam.

In other interesting battles, Keymer will take on Parham Maghsoodloo of Iran, while Armenian-turned-American Levon Aronian faces a strong challenge from Radoslav Wojtaszek of Poland.

Complete pairings round 4 (Indians unless specified): Frederic Svane (Ger) vs Shant Sargysyan (Arm); Peter Leko (Hun) vs Arjun Erigaisi; R Praggnanandhaa vs Daniil Dubov (Fid); Matthias Bluebaum (Ger) vs Alexander Domchenko (Ger); V Pranav vs Nodirbek Yakubboev (Uzb); Andrey Esipenko (Fid) Vincent Keymer (Ger); Wei Yi (Chn) vs Parham Maghsoodloo (Iri); Alexey Sarana (Fid) vs Jose Eduardo Martinez Alacantra (Mex); Nils Grandelius (Swe) vs P Harikrishna; Samuel Sevian (Usa) vs Lorenzo (Lodici (Ita); Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra) vs Aleksy Grebnev (Fid); Awonder Liang (Usa) vs Gabriel Sargissian (Arm); Le Quang Liem (Vie) vs V Karthik; Sam Shankland (Usa) vs Richard Rapport (Hun); Levon Aronian (Usa) vs Radoslav Wojtaszek (Pol); Yu Yangyi (Chn) vs Javokhir Sindarov (Uzb).