Indian Grandmaster Arjun Erigaisi defeated Spain's David Anton Guijarro in the ninth and final round with 7.5 points to win the 28th Abu Dhabi Masters chess tournament, on Thursday.
What's worth noting is the fact that Arjun made it to the finals undefeated. Sindarov claimed the second spot after he defeated Iran's M Amin Tabatabaei.
The Warangal lad, who is currently India's number three in the live rating list, has been impressive in recent times, having gained 35 Elo rating points after the recently-concluded Chess Olympiad in India. In Abu Dhabi, Arjun posted six wins and drew the other three games to emerge a clear winner in a field that included several GMs from across the world.
His victories came against compatriots Rohit Krishna, Deep Sengupta, Raunak Sadhwani, top-seed Wang Hao of China, Alexsandr Indjic (Serbia) and Guijjaro. He drew against Evgeny Tomashevky (Russia), Jorden van Foreest, and Ray Robson.
A bunch of players including Indians Nihal Sarin, S P Sethuraman, Karthikeyan Murali and Aryan Chopra, all GMs and Aditya Samant, a FIDE Master, scored 6.5 points.
Dutchman Jorden van Foreest took third place followed by USA's Ray Robson while Sarin secured sixth place and was followed by Sethuraman, Samant, Karthikeyan Murali, and Chopra to round out the top 10. Another Indian GM Arjun Kalyan was placed 15th while the experienced B Adhiban finished 19th. In 2018, Arjun became the first grandmaster from the state of Telangana.
(Inputs PTI)
