Ju Wenjun continues to impress

Most of the players who had a strong start at the Sharjah Masters decided to play it safe in rounds 3 and 4, as almost all games on the top boards finished drawn on Friday and Saturday. Nonetheless, a number of players did manage to join the leading pack by scoring wins on the lower boards. 

Women’s world champion Ju Wenjun and Indian prodigy Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu were sharing the lead after two rounds. They remain as co-leaders, but they have now been joined by six more participants who also have plus-two scores in the standings: Samuel Sevian, Amin Tabatabaei, Haik Martirosyan, Nihal Sarin, Aryan Chopra and Vladislav Kovalev.

Attack like a Super Grandmaster

In this Fritztrainer: “Attack like a Super GM” with Gukesh we touch upon all aspects of his play, with special emphasis on how you can become a better attacking player.

Ju is clearly the lowest-rated player in this group, as she is in fact the only co-leader not rated above 2600. After claiming upset victories in the first two rounds, she continued to impress by safely holding draws against Pragg and the ever-dangerous Tabatabaei. Ju is set to face Martirosyan with black in Sunday’s fifth round.

Ju Wenjun

One of the biggest surprises in round 4 was given by Aryan Chopra, who got the better of eighth seed Arjun Erigaisi with white. Arjun was overly optimistic in the opening and early middlegame, as his far-advanced central pawns turned out to be more a weakness than a threat.

Typical opening mistakes

Avoiding mistakes in the opening and even learning from mistakes is a valuable tool to improve your chess. Ruslan Ponomariov, former FIDE World Champion, demonstrates basic patterns that will help you navigate through the game more easily.

Both sides have pushed their central pawns, but White’s pawn chain is certainly more solid than its Black’s counterpart. Aryan went on to grab the c-pawn two moves later and duly converted his advantage into a 61-move win.

The playing hall

In round 3, Harsha Bharathakoti needed only 16 moves to take down Lucas van Foreest with the black pieces.

Out of an Alapin Sicilian, which saw the players repeating 13 moves from a 2022 grandmaster game (given how long they spent on choosing how to proceed, they were out of book before that tough), the Dutchman opted for the incorrect capture on move 16 and had to resign right after his Indian opponent showed the refutation on the board. 

Standings - Round 4

...78 players

Pairings - Round 5

...39 boards

All available games

Links

• Tournament’s Facebook page
• Full technical information on Chess-Results