Chess: Sethuraman steals the show

The 24-year-old Sethu played two excellent rapid games against India’s No 2 player Pentala Harikrishna to advance to the third round. Earlier, Sethu had beaten another strong player, Ruslan Ponomariov, in the first round. Sethu will next meet Anisgh Giri in the third round. 

Interestingly, Sethuraman had got the better of Harikrishna in World Cup 2015 too. Sethu was able to beat Hari in the classical games itself with the score of 1.5-0.5 then. This time, however, the match went into the tiebreaks after both the classical games ended in draws. Both the players had played well and choosing a favourite was pretty difficult. Hari did have an Elo edge over Sethu of nearly 130 rating points. However, we all know that Sethuraman is under-rated.

His 2619 rating is at least 50 points below his actual strength. In the second game Hari had the white pieces and he played a new move in the opening but Sethu equalised the game. 

When Harikrishna started to go ever so slightly wrong, Sethu picked up the opportunity and played an excellent technical game to finish off his opponent. Sethu’s friend from Chennai Baskaran Adhiban too had a good outing as he stretched Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia and was winning the first game comfortably. However, he made an error and finally lost the match.