Firouzja leads the way for Continental Kings in victory over Mumba Masters

Alireza Firouzja just turns up at the Global Chess League and wins most of the time. Last year, he drew his first game and then won the following six, as he went on to play a major role in Triveni Continental Kings’ title defence in London.

Things are hardly any different in the third season of the GCL. He has made it five Out of five so far: he beat Maxime Vachier-Lagrave to lead Continental Kings to a 9-5 win against upGrad Mumba Masters in the clash between the table-toppers at the Royal Opera House here on Thursday.

It was indeed Firouzja’s win that decided the closely contested affair. All the other four boards had been drawn. He held his nerves in time pressure to make use of his rival’s inaccurate moves.

So Firouzja has beaten every player on the Icon board, his previous victims being the World No. 3 Fabiano Caruana, the reigning World champion D. Gukesh, the World No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura and the five-time World champion Viswanathan Anand. His teammate Alexandra Kosteniuk paid him a tribute: “It is nice to have such a leader,” she said. “It is an unbelievable result.”

The day also saw the unbelievably bad run of PBG Alaskan Knights, the runner-up last year, coming to an end. The Knights defeated Alpine SG Pipers 12-8, with Gukesh and fellow-Indian Arjun Erigaisi delivering on the top two boards, as they beat Caruana and Anish Giri, respectively. The match produced decisive results on all six boards, in fact.

In the day’s other match, Ganges Grandmasters beat Fyers American Gambits 8-7. Javokhir Sindarov, the recent winner at the World Cup in Goa, was the hero: he beat Richard Rapport. Four games in the match were drawn, and Polina Shuvalova was defeated by Bibisara Assaubayeva.

At the half-way mark of the league phase, Continental Kings and Mumba are ahead.

The results (fifth round): upGrad Mumba Masters lost to Triveni Continental Kings 5-9 (Maxime Vachier-Lagrave lost to Alireza Firouzja; Wesley So drew with Wei Yi; Shakhriyar Mamedyarov drew with Vidit Gujrathi; Koneru Humpy drew with Zhu Jiner; D. Harika drew with Alexandra Kosteniuk; Bardiya Daneshvar drew with MarcAndria Maurizzi).

PBG Alaskan Knights bt Alpine SG Pipers 12-8 (D. Gukesh bt Fabiano Caruana; Arjun Erigiaisi bt Anish Giri; Leinier Dominguez bt R. Praggnanandhaa; Kateryna Lagno bt Hou Yifan; Sarasadat Khademalsharieh lost to Nina Batsiashvili; Daniel Dardha lost to Leon Mendonca).

Fyers American Gambits lost to Ganges Grandmasters 7-8 (Hikaru Nakamura drew with Viswanathan Anand; Vladislav Artemiev drew with Vincent Keymer; Richard Rapport lost to Javokhir Sindarov; Bibisara Assaubayeva bt Polina Shuvalova; Teodora Injac drew with Stavroula Tsolakidou; Volodor Murzin drew with Raunak Sadhwani).

(The writer is in Mumbai at the invitation of Tech Mahindra).