World champion D Gukesh plunged to a third successive defeat, losing to 16-year-old Turkish Grandmaster Ediz Gurel in the seventh round of the FIDE Grand Swiss at Samarkand, Uzbekistan, yesterday. Coming off reverses to USA’s Abhimanyu Mishra and Nikolas Theodorou of Greece, the rest day did little to arrest Gukesh’s slide as he made a bad move in the endgame to extend his losing streak. He now has three points from seven outings and needs to win all of his matches to stay in contention.
Meanwhile, Indian GM Nihal Sarin grabbed a share of the lead after a thrilling victory over Parham Maghsoodloo of Iran. He is joined by German GM Matthias Bluebaum, who defeated Arjun Erigaisi. Both have 5.5 points.
Seven players, including Vidit Gujrathi, Iranian-French star Alireza Firouzja, Uzbek GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov, and Americans Hans Niemann and Abhimanyu Mishra, are in joint second place with five points each. They all won their respective matches in the seventh round to move within half a point of the lead.
R Praggnanandhaa defeated Israeli GM Maxim Rodshtein to move to 4.5 points, joining 10 others that also include Erigaisi and Pranav Venkatesh. In the women’s section, defending champion Vaishali Rameshbabu regained the lead after defeating Chinese IM Guo Qi to register her fifth win of the competition. GM Divya Deshmukh also picked up a win.
The top two from each section will make it to the Candidates tournament of 2026, which will determine the challenger for the next World Championship match in both men’s and women’s sections.
Must Read
- Advertisement -
