GM Sadhwani wins international online title
| Date :23-Jul-2020 |
Principal Correspondent ;
GRANDMASTER Raunak Sadhwani is making his every move count. In recent past, the 15-year-old Grandmaster from Nagpur has attracted attention of top chess players from around the world with his title winning performances. He proved that beating World Number 2 Fabiano Caruana earlier this month was not flash in the pan with a gold winning performance on late Monday night. Sadhwani consolidated his stature at the top further with a dream performance in the Arena Blitz Online Championship organised on the International Chess Day.
The competition was organised by American Unity Chess Club on the platform of lichess.org. Stamping his authority among 1146 chess masters, who participated in the three-minute time control chess championship, Sadhwani, son of Bharat and Heena Sadhwani, emerged champion in the two-hour Arena competition which was held exclusively for rated chess masters of the world. According to reports, Sadhwani played 41 rounds in the competition to clinch the gold medal in the international tourney.
The ninth youngest GM in the world, Maharashtra’s youngest GM and Shiv Chhatrapati award winner Sadhwani gave an astounding performance (2796 rating) to win one of the toughest tournaments played online from home. Sadhwani recorded a whopping 26 victories and managed to hold five rated Grandmasters. He suffered 10 defeats and finished on top of the table with a 63% winning rate against an average rating of 2610 Elo of his respective opponents. Sadhwani took to twitter to celebrate his title win. “Feels good to win such a strong tournament @ChessUnity!! My Best Arena Score so far,” he tweeted. Sadhwani was followed by GM Arjun Erigaisi and GM Aleksei Sarana both from Russia. Sadhwani made a rousing start to the competition as he prevailed over Russian GM Evgeny Levin. He then got the better of 2573 Elo rated GM Ivan Rozum.
With a commanding start, Sadhwani went on to record 11 successive wins. In some of the games he snatched victories from the jaws of defeats. He also scored upset victories over super GMs and then held two rated masters in his penultimate and final round contests. Sadhwani shocked GM Ukrainian Kirill Shevchenko (2592 Elo) in the 38th round and then stunned Russian super GM Andrey Esipenkom (2682 Elo), the 2017 European and World U-16 champion. While gaining top perch, Sadhwani defeated Russian GM Vladimir Fedoseev, the Fide World Cup 2015 and 2017 participant, and also scored a win over 2630 Elo Armenian GM Haik Martirosyan in the 19th round.