Tata Steel Chess Wijk aan Zee: Gukesh, Arjun, Aravindh face defeat; Pragg draws in round 7

A tough outing for India in the 7th round of the Tata Steel Chess Wijk aan Zee, as three of the four players faced a defeat in their respective games in the Netherlands on Saturday.

After this disappointing round, all four Indian players have now dropped significantly in the overall table, as all of them are now in the bottom 5 places of the table.

GM Gukesh Dommaraju faced his second consecutive defeat of the tournament after blundering his rook against home favourite Anish Giri in a 37-move match.

Earlier, Gukesh had a similar rook blunder against Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan in the sixth round, resulting in a big drop in his standings.

With this defeat, Gukesh has now dropped out of the top 10 with just 3 points from 7 games, trailing the leader Nodirbek by a huge 2.5-point margin.

Meanwhile, GM Praggnandhaa played his fifth consecutive draw of the tournament against Matthias Bluebaum of Germany in his seventh round match-up.

The defending champion now has 2.5/7, currently in the second-to-last position at the halfway stage of the tournament, with 6 more rounds to go.

GM Arjun Erigaisi, having white pieces, has also lost his game against 14-year-old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus of Turkiye in a rook-bishop endgame.

Having won just half a point from the last three games, Arjun now dropped drastically to 9th position with just 3/7 points and will need a long streak of wins to come back into the title race.

On the other hand, GM Aravindh Chithambram faced his third defeat of the tournament against Dutch Gm Jorden van Foreest, dropping down to last position in the overall table with just 2 points.

He will next take on Arjun in an all-Indian round-8 match-up on Sunday, while Gukesh and Pragg will take on Vladimir Fedoseev (SLO) and Yagiz (TUR) in their respective games.