The Indian teenage Grandmaster, Arjun Erigaisi clinches the 28th Abu Dhabi Masters chess tournament, beating Spain’s David Anton Guijjaro on Thursday. The 18-year-old from Telangana remained unbeaten as he scored a superb 7.5/9 to emerge victorious. He was a member of the Indian A team at the Olympics.

♟️🏆 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐈𝐎𝐍! Arjun Erigaisi won the Abu Dhabi Chess Masters by scoring an unbeaten 7.5/9.

👏 The 18-year-old is now placed third amongst Indians in the rankings!#ArjunErigaisi #Chess #AbuDhabiMasters #TeamIndia #BharatArmy pic.twitter.com/rctyFZpVSH

— The Bharat Army (@thebharatarmy) August 26, 2022

Previously, R Praggnanandha beat Magnus Carlsen to finish second at the FTX Crypto Cup in Miami earlier this week, now Arjun Erigaisi won the Abu Dhabi Masters on Thursday.

After clinching a victory in Abu Dhabi, Erigaisi is now ranked 24th in the world with a live ELO rating of 2724.6. It’s interesting to know that only two Indians above Erigaisi are Viswanathan Anand (2756) and D Gukesh (2728.3).

Erigaisi’s coach Srinath Narayanan, said

“His victory is incredibly impressive. The tournament had a pretty strong field. There were a lot of players above 2600. Usually, a score of 6.5 or 7 is enough to become champion.”

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Arjun also remained unbeaten in all nine rounds and finished half a point ahead of Uzbekistan’s Javokhir Sindarov. Sindarov, on the other hand, defeated Iran’s M Amin Tabatabaei to take second place. Dutchman Jorden van Foreest secured third place followed by USA’s Ray Robson

In Abu Dhabi, Arjun secured six wins and drew the other three games to emerge victorious. He won the matches against Rohit Krishna, Deep Sengupta, Raunak Sadhwani, top-seed Wang Hao of China, Alexsandr Indjic (Serbia), and Guijjaro. He drew with Evgeny Tomashevky (Russia), Jorden van Foreest, and Ray Robson.

Other Indian players, Nihal Sarin, S P Sethuraman, Karthikeyan Murali, and Aryan Chopra, and Aditya Samant scored 6.5 points. Sarin secured sixth place whereas Indian GM Arjun Kalyan was placed 15th.

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