Vidit wins Tata Steel Chess Challengers

Baskaran Adhiban from Chennai had qualified in similar fashion two years ago winning the Challengers section.

With a rating of 2718, Vidit started as the first seed and had the onus to stay true to his top billing. His main competitors before the start of the event were Bassem Amin (2693) from Egypt, Michal Krasenkow (2671) from Poland and Anton Korobov (2654) from Ukraine.

There were also many young talents like World Junior Champion Aryan Tari (2599) from Norway, Jeffery Xiong (2634) from USA and Jorden van Foreest (2629) from the Netherlands. Vidit scored 9.0/13 with five wins and eight draws to remain unbeaten and finish first.

Gujrathi and Ukrainian Korobov were going neck to neck until round 11 with 7.5 points each. But Vidit scored 1.5 points in the last two rounds, while Korobov could score only a half point. Thus, the Indian GM won the tournament with one extra point. Vidit gained 5.3 Elo points from this event and now has his live Elo rating up to 2723. This brings him on the 30th spot on the world rankings. 

“This victory means a lot to me,” said Vidit, “Because I qualify for the Masters section in 2019.” Magnus Carlsen won the main section and Viswanathan Anand finished fifth.