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Prague Chess Festival R3: Vidit Grabs The Lead
Legendary GM Vlastimil Hort plays the first move in Vidit vs Ragger. Photo: Vladimir Jagr/Prague Chess Festival.

Prague Chess Festival R3: Vidit Grabs The Lead

PeterDoggers
| 13 | Chess Event Coverage

GM Vidit Gujrathi grabbed the sole lead with his second win in the Prague Chess Festival. The 25-year-old Indian grandmaster beat GM Markus Ragger in round three.

You can follow the tournament here in our live portal. The tournament runs February 12-21 with a rest day on February 17. The rounds start at 15:00 CET which is 6 a.m. Pacific time. The last round starts an hour earlier.


It's not easy to beat Ragger, and you can more or less forget about a victory in the opening. The Austrian grandmaster is a strong theoretician! Also in this Gruenfeld against Vidit, it looks like he could have drawn the game straight out of the opening.

As it went, Vidit won a pawn and capitalized on his advantage when Ragger missed ways to generate counterplay shortly before the time control:

The other winners were David Anton, who profited from David Navara's mistakes in time trouble, and Alireza Firouzja, who won a beautifully conducted game against Pentala Harikrishna that reminded of some of Bobby Fischer's wins in the Ruy Lopez.

Firouzja Harikrishna Prague 2020
An excellent win for Firouzja. Photo: Vladimir Jagr/Prague Chess Festival.

Prague Masters | Round 3 Games

Prague Masters | Round 3 Standings

# Fed Name Rtg Perf 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 Pts SB
1 Vidit, Santosh Gujrathi 2721 2962 ½ 1 1 2.5/3
2 Vitiugov, Nikita 2731 2795 ½ 1 ½ 2.0/3 2.75
3 Firouzja, Alireza 2726 2801 ½ ½ 1 2.0/3 2.25
4 Duda, Jan-Krzysztof 2755 2824 ½ ½ 1 2.0/3 1.5
5 Grandelius, Nils 2659 2723 ½ ½ ½ 1.5/3 2.5
6 Anton Guijarro, David 2697 2723 ½ 0 1 1.5/3 1.75
7 Ragger, Markus 2670 2606 0 ½ ½ 1.0/3 2
8 Harikrishna, Pentala 2713 2593 0 ½ ½ 1.0/3 1.75
9 Shankland, Sam 2683 2611 0 ½ ½ 1.0/3 1.25
10 Navara, David 2717 2433 0 0 ½ 0.5/3

Hannes Stefansson continues to lead the Challengers section after a good, technical win against IM Lukas Cernousek. Meanwhile, Russian youngster Andrey Esipenko won his first game. In a spectacular fight with Polish GM Kacper Piorun, he could have lost as well:

Andrey Esipenko Prague 2020
Andrey Esipenko. Photo: Vladimir Jagr/Prague Chess Festival.

Prague Challengers | Round 3 Games

Prague Challengers | Round 3 Standings

# Fed Name Rtg Perf 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 Pts SB
1 Stefansson, Hannes 2529 2819 ½ 1 1 2.5/3
2 Esipenko, Andrey 2654 2713 ½ ½ 1 2.0/3
3 Abasov, Nijat 2670 2596 ½ ½ ½ 1.5/3 2.25
4 Bartel, Mateusz 2639 2552 ½ ½ ½ 1.5/3 2.25
5 Nguyen, Thai Dai Van 2560 2622 ½ ½ ½ 1.5/3 2.25
6 Krejci, Jan 2559 2558 ½ ½ ½ 1.5/3 2
7 Van Foreest, Jorden 2667 2602 ½ ½ ½ 1.5/3 1.75
8 Piorun, Kacper 2611 2615 0 ½ 1 1.5/3 1.25
9 Cernousek, Lukas 2442 2455 0 ½ ½ 1.0/3
10 Kriebel, Tadeas 2524 2323 0 ½ 0 0.5/3

The Prague Chess Festival has a prize fund of 44,000 euros ($48,000) and runs February 12-21 in Hotel Don Giovanni in Prague.


Previous reports:

PeterDoggers
Peter Doggers

Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms.

Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools.

Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013.

As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”

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