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Chess World Cup: Karthik in Rd 4, Gujrathi loses
Gujrathi is forced to resign after a blunder in the third round tiebreak against Sam Shankland of the USA
Mumbai: For a few seconds that may have felt like an eternity Vidit Gujrathi sat at the table, analysing the chess pieces, hoping for a way out. There was none.
With a forlorn expression, he resigned against American grandmaster Sam Shankland. And with the 3.5-2.5 defeat, his journey at the 2025 Chess World Cup came to an end in the third round tiebreaks.
Sunday was a mixed day for the Indian contingent in Arpora, Goa. Three players from the host country were competing in the third round tiebreaks, hoping to join the four who had already made it to the next round. While Gujrathi and SL Narayanan were beaten, Karthik Venkataraman managed to secure a spot in the fourth round.
By most assumptions though – even that of world No.5 Anish Giri who spoke about it to ChessBase India – Gujrathi was the favourite to win the third round tie against Shankland.
The pair drew their two classical games on Friday and Saturday, taking the match into the tiebreaks. In the rapid format though Gujrathi started strongly with black pieces, winning the opening match.
The world No.27 needed just a draw in the second match, but Shankland – world No.70 –managed to pull off a win to level the match. In the first game of the next round of tiebreaks, the players cancelled each other out in a draw. That is until Gujrathi blundered on the 53rd move to give Shankland the upper hand.
The American hold his nerve before forcing the win.
On the other board, the match-up between Narayanan and Chinese GM Yu Yangyi went into a tiebreak after they drew both the classical games. On Sunday however, Yu, playing with white pieces in the first rapid game, won and then held on to draw the second to enter the fourth round.
Karthik, 25, became the fifth Indian to make it to the fourth round. He beat Romanian GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac (ROU) in the second game of the tiebreaks with black pieces. Having drawn the first rapid game with white pieces, he pinned Deac’s king and cashed in on the extra bishop, winning in 43 moves.
He will next take on the 13th seed Quang Liem Le of Vietnam. The fourth round starts on Tuesday.
The seasoned Pentala Harikrishna will next play Nils Grandelius of Sweden. Reigning junior world champion Pranav V will face Uzbekistan’s Nodirbek Yakubboev.
In the other half of the draw, last edition’s runner-up R Praggnanandhaa and India No.1 Arjun Erigaisi are slowly edging towards a potential semi-final clash. The pair had faced off in the quarter-final in the last edition.
Third seed Praggnanandhaa plays his fourth round match against Russian GM Daniil Dubov, the 30th seed. Second seed Erigaisi, who has won three of his four classical games so far in the competition, has an interesting fourth round tie against 2004 World Chess Championship runner-up Peter Leko of Hungary.
