Superbet Classic Round 5: Pragg, Gukesh miss chances, settle for draw

R Praggnanandhaa missed a queen move under a time crunch and forced his opponent Wesley So to play out a draw in the fifth round of the Superbet Classic in Bucharest, Romania. 

D Gukesh missed out a tactical move and played out a draw against Abdusattarav and settled for a draw.

Praggnanandhaa's miss

The game with Wesley So and Praggnanandhaa started with the King’s Indian defense.

Praggnanandhaa, however, came out of theory early as he played the same variations many times resulting in a loss for him.

An aequalis game followed throughout before Wesley decided to take a free pawn, which lead to a plus-six advantage for Praggnanandhaa.

The boy from Chennai just had to find the winning move putting his queen in the open file, but failed to spot it under the time crunch and lost the advantage.

When asked in the post-game interview, if he had spotted the move, Praggnanandhaa said, “No, but should have.”

Wesley knew he committed a blunder and got a second chance. He smoothly repeated the pieces and Praggnanandhaa followed the suit and both the players settled for a draw.

Gukesh settles for a draw 

Gukesh started with a simple queen’s pawn opening to which, Garry Kasparov in the commentary box, said Gukesh is hiding his opening preparation for the World Championships.

However, the game didn’t have much to offer except a tactical move on 27 for Gukesh where he could’ve played his knight to b6 followed by a three-piece pressure on that square.

The players exchanged the pieces and the two kings stood parallel to each other, resulting in a draw. 

In the other games, the leader of the tournament Fabiano Caruana also settled for a draw against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, with Maxime giving no chances to Fabiano to curate an attack on him.

Anish Giri and Alireza Firouza also played out a draw, exchanging pieces throughout.

The wildcard Daniel and the previous world championship challenger Ian Nepomniactchi played a marathon game of 109 moves. Ian continued to infiltrate and create imbalances but the home lad didn’t let Ian succeed and both ended the game in a draw.

Monday is a rest day at the Superbet Classic 2024 and Round six will be played on July 2. 

Round 6 Pairings

• R Praggnanandhaa vs Bogdan-Daniel Deac
  
• Maxime-Vachier Lagrave vs Gukesh D
  
• Fabiano Caruana vs Ian Nepomniactchi
  
• Alireza Firouza vs Wesley So
  
• Nodirbek Abdusattarav vs Anish Giri