Stavanger. Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa defeated world number two Fabiano Caruana of the US in the fifth round of the Norway Chess Championship, moving into the top 10 of the world rankings. Hikaru Nakamura of the US defeated out-of-form world champion Ding Liren of China to extend his lead over Norway’s Magnus Carlsen to one point. Nakamura has 10 points.
Carlsen defeated Firouzja Alireza of France. Now that five rounds of matches are yet to be played in the tournament, Praggnanandhaa is at the third spot after world number one Carlsen with 8.5 points. Alireza has 6.5 points and is at the fourth spot. Caruana is at the fifth spot with five points while Ding Liren’s poor form continues. He has only 2.5 points. In the women’s category, India’s R Vaishali continued her dream performance and took her points tally to 10 by defeating China’s Tingqi Lei in the Armageddon game.
After Vaishali comes Anna Muzychuk who has nine points. She defeated Sweden’s Pia Kramling in the fifth round.
Women’s world champion Wenjun Xu defeated India’s Koneru Humpy in Armageddon. She is in third place with 7.5 points.
Lei is in fourth place with six points. He is two points ahead of Humpy. Cramling has only three points and is at the bottom of the table. Initially, there was an exchange of pieces between Praggnanandhaa and Caruana. Praggnanandhaa kept the American player engaged. Caruana made a mistake in the 66th move, which Praggnanandhaa took full advantage of and won 11 moves later.