Sharjah: Salem beats Fedoseev in wild encounter

by Carlos Alberto Colodro
5/17/2024 – Hans Niemann, Aravindh Chithambaram and Saleh Salem have perfect scores after three rounds at the 88-player Sharjah Masters. In Thursday’s round 3, Niemann got the better of Nikolas Theodorou (who came from upsetting Arjun Erigaisi), Aravindh beat Marcin Krzyzanowski, and Salem defeated ninth seed Vlamidir Fedoseev from the black side of what turned out to be a fierce tactical struggle. | Photo: Aditya Sur Roy
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Niemann, Aravindh and Salem co-leaders

Three players are sharing the lead with perfect scores after three rounds in the Sharjah Masters. Hans Niemann (14th seed), Aravindh Chithambaram (19th) and Saleh Salem (30th) are tied for first place after starting the event with three wins in a row.

Niemann came from successfully hunting down Jakhongir Vakhidov’s king on Wednesday, and defeated Nikolas Theodorou, who had upset top seed Arjun Erigaisi in a rather one-sided encounter. Aravindh obtained a positional edge early on and went on to proficiently convert it into a win against Marcin Krzyzanowski, the lowest-rated player in the leading group after two rounds. Finally, Salem got the better of Vladimir Fedoseev with the black pieces after a tactical, double-edged struggle (see analysis of the game below).

Standing a half point behind the leaders are five players: Amin Tabatabaei (5th seed), Sam Shankland (18th), Volodar Murzin (28th), Abhimanyu Puranik (29th) and Sangalp Gupta (66th). The latter obtained back-to-back upset wins in rounds 2 and 3, against Shant Sargsyan and Nodirbek Yakubboev respectively.

There are no rest days in the 9-round event, which will come to an end next Wednesday. In round 4, Salem will play white against Niemann, while Tabatabaei will get the white pieces against Aravindh.

Hans Niemann

Hans Niemann | Photo: Aditya Sur Roy

Aravindh Chithambaram

Aravindh Chithambaram | Photo: Aditya Sur Roy

Fedoseev 0 - 1 Salem

Vladimir Fedoseev

Vladimir Fedoseev during round 2 | Photo: Aditya Sur Roy

Standings after round 3

Rk. Name Pts.  TB1 
1 Salem, A.R. Saleh 3 0
2 Niemann, Hans Moke 3 0
3 Aravindh, Chithambaram Vr. 3 0
4 Murzin, Volodar 2,5 0
5 Tabatabaei, M. Amin 2,5 0
6 Sankalp, Gupta 2,5 0
7 Puranik, Abhimanyu 2,5 0
8 Shankland, Sam 2,5 0
9 Theodorou, Nikolas 2 0
10 Muradli, Mahammad 2 0
11 Krzyzanowski, Marcin 2 0
12 Ter-Sahakyan, Samvel 2 0
13 Fedoseev, Vladimir 2 0
14 Royal, Shreyas 2 0
15 Vakhidov, Jakhongir 2 0
16 Iniyan, Pa 2 0
17 Daneshvar, Bardiya 2 0
18 Yu, Yangyi 2 0
19 Sarana, Alexey 2 0
20 Nesterov, Arseniy 2 0
21 Sindarov, Javokhir 2 0
22 Siddharth, Jagadeesh 2 0
23 Erigaisi, Arjun 2 0
Maurizzi, Marc`andria 2 0
25 Nguyen, Thai Dai Van 2 0

...88 players

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Carlos Colodro is a Hispanic Philologist from Bolivia. He works as a freelance translator and writer since 2012. A lot of his work is done in chess-related texts, as the game is one of his biggest interests, along with literature and music.