Vidit Gujrathi drew with group leader Levon Aronian and P. Harikrishna fell well short of proving his superiority over veteran Alexei Shirov in the fourth round of the FIDE Grand Prix chess tournament in Berlin on Monday.
With two rounds remaining in the league, Vidit and Harikrishna have two points each. They need to strike big when the action resumes after a day’s rest. Only the group leaders from the four four-player groups will advance to the semifinals.
Vidit needed 38 moves to hold Aronian for the second time in four days. Hari could not break Shirov’s defence in their marathon lasting 76 moves. The game ended when only the kings remained on the board.
At the end of the round that produced three decisive games, Wesley So (3 points) appeared the best-placed aspirant to reach the semifinals.
He posted his second win after facing fellow American Leinier Dominguez Perez. Vladimir Fedoseev and Daniil Dubov were the other winners.
At present, Hikaru Nakamura (Group A), Fedoseev, Radoslaw Wojtaszek (Group B), Aronian (Group C) and So (Group D) are the front-runners to advance to the knockout phase.
The results (fourth round):
Group A: Alexander Grischuk (Rus, 2) drew with Andrey Esipenko (Rus, 2); Hikaru Nakamura (USA, 2.5) drew with Etienne Bacrot (Fra, 1.5).
Group B: Grigoriy Oparin (Rus, 1) lost to Vladimir Fedoseev (Rus, 2.5); Richard Rapport (Hun, 2) drew with Radoslaw Wojtaszek (Pol, 2.5).
Group C: Daniil Dubov (Rus, 2) bt Vincent Keymer (Ger, 1); Vidit Gujrathi (2) drew with Levon Aronian (USA, 2.5).
Group D: Leinier Dominguez Perez (USA, 2) lost to Wesley So (USA, 3); P. Harikrishna (2) drew with Alexei Shirov (Esp, 1).
