Norway Chess: Praggnanandhaa loses, Vaishali goes down to third after defeat

After days of high at the Norway Chess in Stavanger, the sibling duo of R Praggnanandhaa and R Vaishali suffered defeats in the sixth round on Sunday.

Praggnanandhaa went down to France's Alireza Firouzja in the Armageddon tiebreaker after playing out a draw in the Classical game. The Indian grandmaster remains third on the leaderboard with 9.5 points, trailing Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura.

On the other hand, Vaishali coped with a defeat against world champion Wenjun Ju of China who outsmarted her Indian counterpart in the endgame.

Praggnanandhaa suffered the defeat after Alireza exerted pressure in the Classical game and eventually forced a draw. In the return game, however, the Indian grandmaster could not make a comeback.

Vaishali, on the other hand, succumbed to Wenjun's technical superiority.

In another much-anticipated duel, world no. 1 Carlsen, a local favourite, trounced world champion Ding Liren of China to claim a sole lead with 12 points. Liren has been out of touch so far as he could collect only 2.5 points and is languishing at the bottom of the table.

Likewise, Fabiano Caruana, the world no.2, beat his compatriot Nakamura, aiding Carlsen's surge to the top in the six-player double round-robin contest.

With four rounds remaining in the $161000 tournament, Nakamura is at the second place, just a point behind Carlsen.

Alireza, in the meantime, so far accumulated eight points at the fourth spot as Caruana is fifth with 6.5 points.

In the women's section, Wenjun toppled Vaishali from the top with 10.5 points. Vaishali has now gone down to third after Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine registered a hard-fought Armageddon win against Lei Tingjie of China to finish with 10.5 points in second place.

Koneru Humpy suffered yet another loss, this time against Pia Cramling of Sweden in the Armageddon. Humpy is now fifth behind Lei with five points, while Cramling is at the bottom with 4.5 points.