CHENNAI: Alireza Firouzja stretched his sole lead to a full point by beating D Gukesh, while Hans Niemann failed to convert a sizeable advantage for the second game running as Nihal Sarin staged a terrific escape against the American, despite playing a piece down for more than 110 moves on an eventful second day of the Chennai Grand Masters on Friday. Their marathon encounter ended in a draw after 132 moves.Local boy M Pranesh caught Dmitry Andreikin by surprise as early as the fourth move, prompting the latter to settle for a threefold repetition after just 18 moves in a rare line of the Reversed Sicilian in the English Opening. Arjun Erigaisi, too, appeared to have outprepared top seed Nodirbek Abdusattorov with the black pieces but found his slender middlegame edge difficult to convert.The nervy 69-move battle between Frenchman Firouzja and world champion Gukesh was a highly complex affair. Amid multiple inaccuracies during mutual time scrambles, Gukesh was a pawn down in a rook-and-knight endgame, although the engine evaluation remained level. But when he pushed his h-pawn two squares instead of one on move 58, Firouzja’s advantage became decisive.Nihal sacrificed a bishop on move 18, drawing Niemann’s king from e1 to c2, to open the position and generate counterplay. He could hardly have imagined, however, that the battle would last more than four and a half hours.
