GM David Navara was winning for one move, but eventually GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov scored the full point in their game and now shares the lead at the Prague Masters after today’s third round. The Uzbek grandmaster caught GM Parham Maghsoodloo, who drew his game with GM Vincent Keymer.
GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu was dominating his game against GM Richard Rapport and seemed certain of a win, but then blunderded twice and suffered a second consecutive loss instead—a dramatic turn of events after his 47-game unbeaten streak.
After starting with two losses, GM Thai Dai Van Nguyen scored his first win with the black pieces, against GM Mateusz Bartel. The game GM Gukesh Dommaraju vs. GM Vidit Gujrathi ended in a draw.
Day four starts on Friday at 9 a.m. ET / 15:00 CET / 7:30 p.m. IST.
Prague Masters | Round 3 Results
After the second day of play, Maghsoodloo said that he actually played pretty good chess in Wijk aan Zee, better than his final result of 4.5/13 reflected. A combination of wrong decisions at critical moments and a large dose of bad luck resulted in a bad tournament. So far, Praggnanandhaa is finding himself in a similar position in Prague.
Especially today, he was playing nothing less than a fantastic game, beautifully outplaying Rapport from the white side of a 5.h3 King’s Indian. Black’s play on the queenside was too slow, and by move 23 Pragg had a winning attack which he executed almost perfectly.
He missed one little detail, and the disappointment of spoiling the win led to a second mistake. We’ve all been there… including this author countless times.
Our Game of the Day was another up-and-down affair, but in this case the player who built up a winning advantage, Abdusattorov, ended up winning after all.
In what was only the second game between these two players (the first was in Belgrade in 2022), White went for an early queenside expansion with b4 and a4. Navara responded with a push in the center (12…d5) that created an isolated queen’s pawn for his opponent, but White’s activity was more important.
Abdusattorov, however, missed some chances to crash through on f7 and, when he finally took that pawn, the position had become rather messy. In fact, for one move, Navara was winning, but with 14 minutes left on the clock he failed to find the correct way. It could serve as a training task: why is 28…Rxf7 (played by Navara) wrong and what should you do instead? (See GM Rafael Leitao‘s notes for the solution.)
The cornucopia of blunders at Prague Masters today makes me grateful that such days happen only once every 4 years.
— Levon Aronian (@LevAronian) February 29, 2024
The all-Indian clash between the two Candidates Gukesh and Vidit was quite interesting as well. “Gukesh played really well,” Vidit said in the live broadcast. “After the opening part, he put a lot of pressure and I was on the defending side clearly.”
Out of an Anti-Berlin, Gukesh got a structural edge with an open a-file, but with his move 11.Nh4 he hinted at the option for playing f2-f4 and putting pressure on the kingside as well. Vidit noted that he played several moves out of desperation, but as it turned out, the engine approved of his play.
The only clear miscalculation happened on move 17, so in hindsight, Gukesh should definitely have played f4 there. As it went, Vidit escaped in a slightly worse endgame where he defended well.
At the end of the day, Nguyen emerged as the winner in his game with Bartel, which had looked interesting but drawish for most of the time. It was deep in the rook endgame where Bartel, whose king was fighting against a trio of passers, missed a draw:
Prague Masters | Round 3 Standings
In the Challengers tournament, GM-elect Vaishali Rameshbabu scored her first win, and so did Abhimanyu Mishra.
Prague Challengers | Round 3 Results
Prague Challengers | Round 3 Standings
The 2024 Prague Chess Festival takes place February 27-March 7 at the Don Giovanni Hotel in Prague, Czech Republic. The format is a single round-robin. The time control is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 more minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment per move starting on move one.
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