CHENNAI: Grandmaster P Harikrishna drew with world No. 2 Fabiano Caruana in round 4 of the Tata Steel Masters held at Wijk aan Zee on Tuesday. All seven games in the round ended in draws which meant that Harikrishna, Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Anish Giri and Nils Grandelius continued to be in a five-way lead with 2.5 points each. These five players enjoy a half-point lead from the rest of the pack.
The fourth round in the tournament saw Grandelius and Alireza Firouzja coming close to bagging a full point — against Andrey Esipenko and Aryan Tari respectively – before splitting the points. The Firouzja-Aryan clash saw fortunes fluctuate from one end to another. Firouzja, playing with the black, did his best to grab a full point against Aryan but the latter did well to stay afloat. “This was just an insane game; it was so crazy. It was just like mental torture from the start. You have to think about so much and it’s just so much to calculate all the time, so it’s definitely my most difficult game here so far,” Aryan told the tournament organisers after the match.
Carlsen drew with Jorden van Foreest, while Maxime Vachier-Lagrave battled it out for over six hours against David Anton before settling for a draw. Anish had a draw against Jan-Krzysztof Duda and the result was the same in the Alexander Donchenko- Radoslaw Wojtaszek encounter as well.
