Playing white, Harikrishna needed 56 moves in a Ruy Lopez game to take his tally to 2.5 points after four rounds. It put him in the company of dozens of players, including D Gukesh and K Sasikiran returned with half a point each.
France’s Alireza Firouzja (3.5) is the sole leader at this stage. Young Nihal Sarin is just half a point behind along with 10 other players after settling for a draw. S P Sethuraman (1.5) also split the point with veteran Boris Gelfand.
Young R Praggnanandhaa (2) lost his first game in the tournament, going down to Samuel Sevian. E Arjun (1.5), Surya Sekhar Ganguly (1.0) and B Adhiban (0.5) too suffered defeats.
In the women’s category, R Vaishali was the only Indian to register a victory on Day 4. She beat Meruert Kamalidenova (Kazakhstan) to move to two points.
D Harika held China’s Jiner Zhu to have three points in her kitty along with eight others behind the leader.
Tingjie Lei (3.5) wrested that honour after her win over Russia’s Valentina Gunina.
Padmini Rout lost to Russia’s Alina Kahslinskaya while Vantika Agrwal and Divya Deshmukh drew their games.
The Grand Swiss Tournament and Women’s Grand Swiss 2021 are part of the qualifications for the 2021-23 World Championship cycle. The top two finishers will qualify for the Candidates Tournament 2022.
Ten Indian men and five women are in the fray. -- AICF
