Chess Olympiad: Fifth seeded Indian teams win fifth round

The fifth seeded Indian teams under open and women's category won their matches comfortably against Paraguay and Argentina, respectively, in the 43rd World Chess Olympiad in Georgia.

Both the Indian teams won with identical scores 3.5-0.5 against their respective rivals.

In the open section, recovering from the quick 26-move defeat he suffered on Thursday against Fabiano Caruana, former World Champion Viswanathan Anand coasted to a comfortable 26-move victory against Neuris Delgado Ramirez.

On the second board, P.Harikrishna drew his game against Guillermo Vazquez in 59 moves.

The team captain and coach R.B. Ramesh decided to retain K. Sasikiran on the fourth board and rest young Vidit Santhosh Gujrathi.

As a result, B. Adhiban playing on the third board defeated Antonio Almiron in 35 moves.

On the fourth board, Sasikiran did not find any difficulty in packing off the much lower rated Paulo Jodorcovsky Werjivker in 35 moves.

In the women's section, India's top most ranked player Koneru Humpy defeated Carolina Lujan in 52 moves.

On the second board, Harika Dronavalli found herself in problem and managed to draw against Claudia Amura in 65 moves.

The other two players Eesha Karavade and Tania Sachdeva defeated their opponents.

The Indian women's team has not lost any round till now.

On the other hand, the Indian open team has suffered one loss and only Anand has lost a game while his team mates have either won or split the points with their opponents.

(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be contacted at v.jagannathan@ians.in)

--IANS

vj/nir