Stavanger. India’s brother-sister duo R Praggnanandhaa and R Vaishali lost in the sixth round of the Norway Chess Tournament while Magnus Carlsen defeated out-of-form Ding Liren to take a sole lead with 12 points. Fabiano Caruana of the US defeated compatriot Hikaru Nakamura to help Carlsen take the lead in the six-player double round-robin tournament.
Praggnanandhaa had to struggle a bit against Firouzja Alireza of France in the classical match but then lost in the Armageddon tiebreaker. His sister Vaishali lost to China’s world women’s champion Wenjun Ju. Now that four rounds of matches are yet to be played, after Carlsen, Nakamura is next with 11 points while Praggnanandhaa is in third place with 9.5 points. Alireza is in fourth place with eight points and Caruana is in fifth place with 6.5 points while China’s Ding Liren has managed to score only 2.5 points so far.
In the women’s category, Wenjun Ju and Anna Muzychuk have taken the lead from Vaishali. Both Wenjun Ju and Muzychuk have equal 10.5 points while Vaishali is half a point behind them. Muzychuk defeated China’s Tingji Lei in the Armageddon tiebreaker.
Lei is in fourth place with seven points. She is two points ahead of another Indian player Koneru Humpy. Humpy suffered another defeat at the hands of Sweden’s Pia Kramling in Armagedon. Kramling has 4.5 points and is at the bottom of the table.