Telangana’s Arjun clinches Abu Dhabi Masters

Hyderabad: Telangana chess player and Grandmaster Arjun Erigaisi continued his fine run and clinched the 28th Abu Dhabi Masters chess tournament, beating Spain’s David Anton Guijjaro here on Thursday.

The 18-year-old State player emerged victorious over the Spaniard in the ninth and final round with 7.5 points. Arjun also remained unbeaten through all the nine rounds and finished half a point ahead of Uzbekistan’s Javokhir Sindarov.

Sindarov, on the other hand, beat Iran’s M Amin Tabatabaei to claim the second position. The Warangal lad, who is currently India’s number three in live ratings list, has been impressive in recent times, having gained 35 Elo rating points after the recently-concluded Chess Olympiad in India.

In Abu Dhabi, Arjun posted six wins and drew the other three games to emerge a clear winner in a field that included several GMs from across the world. His victories came against compatriots Rohit Krishna, Deep Sengupta, Raunak Sadhwani, top-seed Wang Hao of China, Alexsandr Indjic (Serbia) and Guijjaro. He drew against Evgeny Tomashevky (Russia), Jorden van Foreest, and Ray Robson.

Other Indian players Nihal Sarin, S P Sethuraman, Karthikeyan Murali and Aryan Chopra, all GMs and Aditya Samant, a FIDE Master, scored 6.5 points. Dutchman Jorden van Foreest took the third place followed by USA’s Ray Robson while Sarin secured sixth place and he was followed by Sethuraman, Samant, Karthikeyan Murali, and Chopra to round out the top-10. Another Indian GM Arjun Kalyan was placed 15th while the experienced B Adhiban finished 19th.