Chapter 135: Timeskip & Fifth Round Pairing!
In reality, though, playing against Marina Brunello was not as difficult as Sheva thought it would be. Well, it might be because after playing against a heavy hitter like Mads Andersen and Praggnanandhaa, his confidence soared, so that he felt anyone below those two would be manageable. However, it worked, as he managed to beat the woman pretty comfortably.
Their game lasted approximately one and a half hours, and no complications arose during that time. Playing with white, Sheva pulled the Sicilian Defense Alapin Variation and confronted the woman head-on, dragging the game into a wild territory where both players were trying to kill each other directly.
After the first ten moves, it was clear that the Italian woman was not used to this kind of game. She was flustered the moment Sheva managed to form a chain of pawns that was so close to her kingside, and in panic, she started to blunder a few times in a row. Well, Sheva didn’t know whether it was out of panic or that she wanted to make a counterplay, but whatever the woman tried to do, it didn’t work and only gave Sheva an advantage in the game.
In the end, after the 27th move, Marina Brunello resigned, giving Sheva another point, and just like Claudia said, ’took revenge’ for Praggnanandhaa’s draw.
Sheva just rolled his eyes in exasperation whenever he remembered this, not knowing where Claudia’s obsession with Praggnanandhaa came from. Hell, an evil thought suddenly came to his mind when he remembered how flustered the girl was whenever he mentioned her obsession.
’I wonder how she would react if I brought Praggnanandhaa here and introduced them to each other...’ A creepy chuckle suddenly slipped out of his mouth at that image, knowing full well that the awkwardness would be hella fun. ’Man, that would be a gold content... Hehehe...’
Well, that would be a story for another time. For now, though, Sheva still wanted to focus on the tournament, especially since he was having a great one currently.
It wasn’t just him who felt that way. In fact, Claudia and Irene were also thriving. After the tough defeat on the second day, they all swept the next two rounds without any problem. Well, Irene’s journey was less impressive, considering her two opponents were all below 2100 rated. Hell, one of them only had an 1800 ELO rating, which didn’t give her a lot of additional points.
It was Claudia who had the highest increase among those three. Even though the girl suffered a defeat against Mishra Abhimanyu in the second round, it only made her lose 3.5 points due to their huge rating difference. After that, she managed to bounce back with two wins in a row, first against Raj Jaivardhan from India, whose rating was 2016, then against the Indian IM Vardaan Nagpal, whose rating was 2372.
The last win was quite a surprise, even by Claudia’s standard, as she was outclassed by the IM for almost the entire game. The man really showed the huge difference between an experienced player like him and Claudia, who had just emerged in the chess world. Hell, the girl was even down by –3.5 at some point, and everything seemed to look bleak for her. However, she showed her resilience, dragging the entire game to the 60th move, and survived. Not only that, she also managed to capitalize on every blunder that Nagpal made, overturning the situation and finally winning the game.
This bounced her rating far close to 2200, making her halfway through the 2250 target that Irfan set for her.
Now, after the fourth round was over, they had accumulated three points already for each of them, putting their names among the top twenty of the tournament. Currently, the veteran grandmaster from Poland, Jarmula Lukasz, leads the entire pack after winning all of his games, followed by a bunch of grandmasters with 3.5 points behind him. Sheva, Claudia, and Irene were on the third tier, standing alongside top players like Hans Niemann, who beat Irene in the second round, or the top-seeded from Iran, Idani Pouya, who seemed not to have a good tournament right now.
However, this good result didn’t make them content or satisfied. Hell, if anything, their guard was at its highest, especially since the pairing for the fifth round was out already, and their next opponent would probably be the hardest in the tournament.
Adrian Sheva (2115) – (2637) Gukesh D
Gupta Abhijeet (2616) – (2392) Irene Kharisma Sukandar
Max Warmerdam (2599) – (2102) Claudia Marisa
Yeah, after getting a good result up until now, they all would finally meet the real top-seeded players in the tournament. Irene was going to play against a veteran grandmaster from India, Gupta Abhijeet, who, while the man started to show a declining performance due to his age, was still one of the strongest players in the tournament. This would also be a test to see whether the woman had some sort of psychological shadow or not, since the last time she played a 2600-GM, she failed to capitalize on her advantage and ended up losing against Hans Niemann in the second round.
Meanwhile, even if her next opponent’s rating was the lowest, that didn’t mean Claudia would have an easy game here. Max Warmerdam was a strong, young player who was hailed as one of the two rising stars from the Netherlands, together with Jordan Van Foreest. He was deemed as Anish Giri’s successor, and during the candidate tournament in 2021, the man was also the sparring partner of Anish Giri, the best Dutch grandmaster, probably of all time. Even though he was still 23, his vast experience was enough to put him among the best players, at least in Europe.
However, that was still pretty mild compared to who Sheva would face in the next round.
Yeah, his opponent was not just an ordinary player. The name was Gukesh Dommaraju, and despite being one year younger than Pragg, somehow, his rating was still slightly higher, showing that the boy was not to be underestimated here. Not only that, he was also the second seed of the tournament, just one point rating below Idani Pouya as the top seed. This showed that he was a talented player who had already shown his talent to the world, and it only gave Sheva a headache at the thought of facing him.
However, that wasn’t the biggest problem here. No, Sheva had something more urgent to think of right now, and that came from several short messages that Pragg had just sent to his phone earlier.
’What the hell is this...’