As a result of his triumph over Alexey Sarana at the Chennai Grand Masters 2024 on Thursday, Arjun Erigaisi has moved up to number two in the world chess rankings.
The first position is still being held by Magnus Carlsen with a rating of 2831.0, while Arjun Erigaisi is rated 2805.8 in the second position, slightly ahead of American Fabiano Caruana who has 2805.0 points. Primarily, Arjun also holds the record of being the second Indian after Viswanathan Anand to surpass the 2800 Elo rating barrier.
Chennai Grand Masters 2024:
Chennai Grand Masters 2024 Image: XThe Chennai Grand Masters 2024 by MGD1 and the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu has two sections, which are Masters and Challengers sections. This year's Masters category is quite competitive with the average rating of 2729. The newly introduced Challengers division provides the up and coming Indian players a platform to display their talents.
While playing with the black pieces, Arjun Erigaisi opened as the Indian Game against Sarana's Queen's Pawn Opening, and swiftly switched to East Indian Defense. After both players castled early in the game, Arjun Erigaisi seized command of the game, this being his second victory of the tournament, raised his ELO rating back to above 2800 and pushed past Fabiano Caruana on the ranking list.
During the third round of the Masters section, Amin Tabatabai was able to execute a sensational victory against Maxime Vachier Lagrave using good tactics. Likewise, Levon Aronian achieved a convincing victory over Parham Maghsoodloo that aided his cause, and Vidit Gujrathi, having lost two previous matches, managed to hold the local star Aravindh Chithambaram to a draw after a difficult battle.
In the Challengers division, Pranav V completed a hat-trick of wins by defeating Karthikeyan Murali for the third time in a row.
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