TePe Sigeman: Harikrishna defeats Nihal to stay in joint lead

Grandmaster Pentala Harikrishna gave an endgame lesson to young Grandmaster GM Nihal Sarin to stay in joint lead after the completion of the fourth round of the TePe Sigeman & Co. chess tournament here.

Harikrishna had the white pieces and in an Anti-Sveshnikov variation, Nihal equalised from the opening. However, Harikrishna always had a nagging edge, mainly stemming from his bishop pair.

Nihal defended carefully and precisely and held the balance for most of the game, but this came at the cost of time. The critical moment came two moves before the time control when Nihal made an error and lost through a picturesque finale.

The ensuing opposite coloured bishop endgame was one of those problems that are easily solved by a powerful computer, but a very hard nut to crack for an unaided human. Nihal put up a bit of 'soft defense' which allowed Harikrishna to finish in style with a Bishop sacrifice.

English Grandmaster Gawain Jones managed to overpower Croatian No. 1 Ivan Saric.

Jones and Harikrishna jointly lead the tournament with 3.0/4 and they are followed by Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu of Germany, Parham Maghsoodloo of Iran and Tiger Hillarp Persson of Sweden -- all of whom have two points each.

Nihal is now in sixth position on 1.5 points with three rounds still to go in the category-17 8-player round robin tournament.

Results round 4: P. Harikrishna (Ind, 3) beat Nihal Sarin (Ind, 1.5); P. Maghsoodloo (Iri, 2) drew with Nils Grandelius (Swe, 1.5); Gawain Jones (Eng, 3) beat Ivan Saric (Cro, 1); Tiger Hillarp-Persson (Swe, 2) drew with Liviu-Doeter Nisipeanu (Ger, 2).