India’s Vidit Gujrathi claims top spot in Prague Chess festival

• Pramod Thomas
• 15 February, 2020

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By: Pramod Thomas

India’s No 2 chess player Vidit Gujrathi continues his form in the Prague Chess festival.  He posted a win over Austrian GM Markus Ragger in the third round to jump to the top spot in the Masters’ category of the festival.

Vidit Gujrathi trumped Ragger in a Grunfeld game after 46 moves to continue his good run and secured a second win.  He is in joint second place with Nikita Vitiugov and world’s top junior Alireza Firouzja.

He faces Sweden’s Grandelius in the fourth round.

Born in Maharashtra, Vidit is the fourth Indian ever to have crossed the rating threshold of 2700. As of December 2019, his rating of 2721 makes him the thirtieth highest-rated chess player in the world, and the third highest-rated chess player in India, after Viswanathan Anand and Pentala Harikrishna.

Another Indian player P Harikrishna went down to the young Alireza Firouzja in 40 moves in a Spanish opening game. The Indian no. 3 came up with some innovative play but the Iranian prodigy had the answers to notch up an impressive win.