Grand Chess Tour: Praggnanandhaa remains in top three after the end of rapid event

R Praggnanandhaa ended the rapid event of Superbet Poland Rapid and Blitz in the third position at the Grand Chess Tour in Warsaw, Poland on Friday. D Gukesh and Arjun Ergaisi fell behind after losing their round-8 and round-9 games respectively.

Praggnanandhaa had a great start to the day as he played out three draws on the final day of the rapid event including two important draws with black pieces against the two leaders Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Wei Yi of China.

Wei won the rapid programme with 13 points, followed by Magnus with 12 while Pragg ended third with 10 points. The event will now move on to the blitz programme which will offer a very quick and exciting chess to watch.

The other two Indians had a comparatively bad final day in rapid as both Arjun and Gukesh collected only two points from the final three rounds including one loss each. Arjun ended the day in sixth position with eight points while Gukesh is languishing at joint 8th position with seven points.

The tournament winner will be decided based on combined points earned from rapid and blitz events, starting on May 11. There will be eighteen blitz games over two days. The final standings could see a massive change after the exciting blitz programme.

The scoring system of blitz games will be different from rapid (2 for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss) as a win in a blitz game will provide only one point while the draw will offer a half point and zero points for a loss.

All three Indians, Pragg, Gukesh and Arjun will be in action for nine quick blitz games on the first day of the competition.

In the first round of blitz, Gukesh will take on the leader Wei Yi while Pragg and Arjun will be up against Jan-Krzysztof Duda of Poland and Anish Giri of the Netherlands respectively.