Kolkata: Nihal Sarin won the Rapid competition of the Tata Steel Chess open category with 6.5 points and dedicated the title to his grandfather AA Ummar who died on Thursday night.
“He was the reason I got into chess,” a visibly emotional Sarin said here on Friday after winning a tournament he was playing only as a replacement for D Gukesh. “I don’t think I was exactly expected to win anything.” This was Sarin’s second title here, having won in 2022.
Kateryna Lagno (6.5) beat defending champion Aleksandra Goryachkina by a massive 1.5 point to win the women’s competition. The winners got $10,000 each.
Playing here after six years, Viswanathan Anand (6) needed a win against Sarin to win but was held to a draw and finished second and got $6000. Including the Jerusalem Open and the Global Chess League, this was Anand’s third tournament since November.
“When you’re playing, it’s actually, what am I going to do now? What opening am I going to enter? All these decisions, you forget to take them after a long time,” said Anand. “And so I’m glad that the build-up went very well. And I think that always a good start is the best. Winning against Wesley (So), I really was happy…There were many key decisions that I took there.”
Anand said his schedule for the rest of the year is not fixed yet. Ditto Sarin who at 21 is one of the flag-bearers of the current generation of Indian Grandmasters. Anand is 56 and most of his contemporaries have retired. “Everyone evolves,” said Anand, explaining how he tries to keep up. But brushing up, “so that you are in a kind of chess playing zone”, also means dealing with “so much new information. And it just floods you.”
Sarin went into the ninth and final round needing a draw to win the competition. He drew with R Praggnanandhaa (who beat Anand in round eight), and beat So in Friday’s earlier rounds. Sarin said the last day was tough but “this is what my grandfather would have wanted me to do. I thought the best way I could pay tribute to him would be by (9:10) somehow trying my best to keep the focus on the tournament.”
Arjun Erigaisi and Nana Dzagnidze finished third in the Open and women’s sections. The blitz competition starts on Saturday.
