Norway Chess 2024: Vaishali gains big lead, Pragg loses to Nakamura

R Vaishali continued her good run at the Norway Chess and registered another win to gain a lead of 2.5 points at the top of women's leaderboard. She clinched a victory in round 4 against Pia Cramling.

On the other hand, Praggnanandhaa lost his round-4 match to Hikaru Nakamura and dropped to third position on the leaderboard at open section.

The American has now jumped up to pole position with 7.5 points.

Pragg didn't have a good game and an accuracy of less than 90 percent in this match was indicative of this. On move 22, a move he made with his knight backfired and turned the match in the favor of Nakamura.

Carlsen wins

Meanwhile, home favourite, Magnus Carlsen, is back to winning ways after losing his third round match to Pragg.

The Norwegian posted a clinical win over Fabiano Caruana of USA with the black pieces.

On the contrary, the reigning world champion, Ding Liren of China, suffered another defeat to Alireza Firouzja of France and is still lagging at the bottom of the leaderboard with just 2.5 points.

Vaishali extends her lead

R Vaishali posted her second win of the tournament and extended her lead at the top.

She displayed an outstanding game against Pia of Sweden with the black pieces and grabbed full three points from the match.

Vaishali maintained a tremendous accuracy of 99.5 percent in this 54-move match to clinch this victory. She now has a total of 8.5 points and is sitting comfortably on the top of the standings by a big lead of 2.5 points.

Meanwhile, Koneru Humpy's horrid show continued as she lost another match in the tournament.

Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine made full use of Humpy's mistakes in the end-game to turn the match in her favour with black pieces.