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Chess Super League R3: 3-Way Tie For 1st Place
Wang Hao and Vidit being interviewed after their match. Image: Samay Raina/YouTube.

Chess Super League R3: 3-Way Tie For 1st Place

PeterDoggers
| 2 | Chess Event Coverage

The round-robin phase of the Chess Super League is still wide open after three rounds of play. The Brutal Bishops, Ruthless Rooks, and Kingslayers are currently in a tie for first place with four match points.

How to watch?
The games of the Chess Super League can be found here as part of our live events platform.

Ruthless Rooks vs. Quintessential Queens: 3.5-2.5

Bo. Fed 2 Ruthless Rooks Rtg 3½ - 2½ Fed 6 Quintessential Queens Rtg
1.1 GM Karthikeyan, Murali 2630 1 - 0 GM Koneru, Humpy 2586
1.2 GM Radjabov, Teimour 2763 ½ - ½ GM Karjakin, Sergey 2743
1.3 GM Muzychuk, Anna 2533 1 - 0 IM Tania, Sachdev 2392
1.4 GM Harika, Dronavalli 2511 1 - 0 GM Hou, Yifan 2658
1.5 IM Raja, Harshit 2494 0 - 1 GM Iniyan, P 2529
1.6 WFM Salonika, Saina 2206 0 - 1 WIM Priyanka, K 2218

Because a team doesn't know in advance if their opponent has made the possible swap of boards (one and two, or three and four, or both), it can happen that both swap and nullify their opponent's decision. This happened in this match, where top guns (and good friends) GM Sergey Karjakin and GM Teimour Radjabov drew their game on... board two. 

An interesting game is GM Harika Dronavalli's win vs. GM Hou Yifan, where the Indian grandmaster used 4...f5!?, demonstrating that it works well after White's c2-c3 when the knight cannot go to c3.

Harika Dronavalli
A good win for Harika Dronavalli. Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.

Kingslayers vs. Krazy Knights: 4-2

Bo. Fed 3 Kingslayers Rtg 4 - 2 Fed 1 Krazy Knights Rtg
2.1 GM Giri, Anish 2774 ½ - ½ GM Nakamura, Hikaru 2736
2.2 GM Sethuraman, S.P. 2620 1 - 0 GM Sasikiran, Krishnan 2640
2.3 IM Soumya, Swaminathan 2351 0 - 1 GM Muzychuk, Mariya 2536
2.4 GM Dzagnidze, Nana 2524 1 - 0 WGM Gomes, Mary Ann 2354
2.5 GM Gukesh, D 2640 ½ - ½ GM Aryan, Chopra 2585
2.6 WIM Arpita, Mukherjee 2229 1 - 0 WIM Mrudul, Dehankar 2256

After a loss in the first round to the Brutal Bishops, the Kingslayers find themselves at the top of the standings after two straight wins. Thanks to good wins on the other boards, it didn't matter that GM Anish Giri spoiled a winning endgame vs. GM Hikaru Nakamura, who must have mixed up his lines in the Berlin endgame:

Brutal Bishops vs. Pivotal Pawns 3-3

Bo. Fed 4 Brutal Bishops Rtg 3 - 3 Fed 5 Pivotal Pawns Rtg
3.1 GM Wang, Hao 2744 ½ - ½ GM Gupta, Abhijeet 2628
3.2 GM Vidit, Santosh Gujrathi 2726 1 - 0 GM Ding, Liren 2799
3.3 GM Kosteniuk, Alexandra 2518 1 - 0 GM Abdumalik, Zhansaya 2507
3.4 IM Karavade, Eesha 2345 0 - 1 IM Kulkarni, Bhakti 2388
3.5 GM Sadhwani, Raunak 2555 ½ - ½ GM Arjun, Kalyan 2537
3.6 WFM Tarini, Goyal 2164 0 - 1 WIM Savitha, Shri B 2281

The Brutal Bishops allowed two teams to join them in the lead after playing another 3-3 tie (but keeping their status as the only unbeaten team). The result that stands out here is GM Vidit Gujrathi's win vs. GM Ding Liren:

Vidit Gujrathi chess
Great play by Vidit Gujrathi. Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.

Round 3 Standings

Rk. Team 1 2 3 4 5 6 MP BP
1 Ruthless Rooks 4 4 12,0
2 Brutal Bishops 3 3 4 11,5
3 Kingslayers 4 4 11,0
4 Pivotal Pawns 3 3 10,0
5 Krazy Knights 2 2 4 2 9,0
6 Quintessential Queens 3 2 1 7,5

All games day 3

The Chess Super League will continue with rounds four and five on Thursday and Friday, followed by playoffs and finals on Saturday and Sunday. The games are played with a time control of 15 minutes plus a 10-second increment. The total prize fund of the event is Rs.40 lakh (U.S. $54,000).


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