Pragg draws with Wei Yi, stays in lead

Paphos: Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa played out an easy draw as black against Wei Yi of China and stayed in joint lead on 1.5 points after the second round of the FIDE Candidates tournament here on Monday.

After a brilliant first round win over Anish Giri, Praggnanadhaa appeared to be in fine fettle for the second day running, putting a bit of pressure on his Chinese counterpart out of a French defense game with black pieces.

Wei Yi decided against going for a complicated struggle and the pieces changed hands at regular intervals leading to a drawn opposite coloured Bishops endgame.

Praggnanadhaa had an extra pawn to boast but white’s position was simply impregnable. The peace was signed in 46 moves. While the opening round provided a lot of fireworks with as many as three decisive games out of a possible four, things calmed down in the second game. Anish Giri played solidly with his white pieces to draw with Fabiano Caruana of United States and Uzbek star Javokhir SIndarov was held to a draw by Matthias Bluebaum of Germany.

The other game of the eight-player double round-robin tournament was also poised for a draw as Hikaru Nakamura of the United States was trying to hold a theoretically drawn rook and pawns endgame against Andrey Esipenko of Russia.

In the women’s section being played simultaneously, Divya Deshmukh missed out on a massive opportunity to go in to sole lead as she blundered in a winning position against compatriot R Vaishali.

Divya got a tactical finesse when both players ran low on time and she spotted it just in time. However, the Nagpur based women’s World Cup winner misplayed very quickly and allowed Vaishali to get off the hook with a fine counter blow involving a queen sacrifice.

Jiner Zhu of China was the other one to miss out on a nearly winning position that she squandered against Russian Kateryna Lagno.