Arjun Erigaisi wins Abu Dhabi Masters

Fourth seed Arjun Erigaisi won the Abu Dhabi Masters Chess Championship in less than 24 hours in less than 24 hours on Thursday.

After beating struggling top-seeded China’s Wang Hao in the eighth round on Wednesday night, Arjun came back to finish the job on Thursday morning by holding off ninth-seeded Spaniard David Anton.

In fact, the game was tied until Anton made a misjudgment on move 62. Arjun spotted Anton’s mistake and forced his resignation at move 67 to become the well-deserved champion.

A victory in the final round was important for Arjun to become the clear champion. In the event of a tie in the final round, Arjun will be tied on seven points with Uzbekistan’s Jovokir Sindarov, who has a higher tiebreaker. In the end, Sindarov won the runner-up. It is worth noting that the average rating of the strong 148 players is 2396.

Arjun received $15,000 for his stunning undefeated effort of 7.5 points in nine rounds. With a rating of 2689, Arjun achieved a staggering 2893 and earned 22 rating points. According to the field rankings, Arjun has a career-high No. 24 and No. 3 among Indians behind Viswanathan Anand (No. 12) and D. Gukesh (No. 20).

Nihal Sarin leads the five Indians with 6.5 points in 6th to 10th place. Among them was Aditya Samant, whose performances reached a master level. Aditya has a rating of 2430 and a performance of 2709, and finished his campaign with an astonishing third-seeded Russian Alexandr Predke.

In the earlier rounds, Aditya drew with Nihal and Aryan, and overcame Abhijit Gupta and Australia general manager Timur Kubokarov before taking on No. 11 Seed Argentine Sandro Mareco drew.

The caravan has now moved to Dubai for the Dubai Open, which starts on Saturday. Joining the mighty and sprawling Indian brigade will be R. Praggnanandhaa as the fourth seed.