Asian Continental Blitz Championship 2014: Harikrishna and Harika finish second, claim silver

Chess in India seems to be on a roll. Close on the heels of Viswanathan Anand’s success at the Candidates tournament, Pendyala Harikrishna and Dronavalli Harika have brought more glory to the nation with some brilliant performances in the desert city of Sharjah. Harikrishna especially, should be delighted with his second place finish and the silver medal, considering that he hasn’t played the blitz format in nearly two years.

GM Yu Yangi won the Asian Blitz Chess Championship with 7.5 points out of 9 games, GM Harikrishna and GM Ehsan Ghaem Maghami finished joint second, half a point behind the winner.

WGM Tan Zhongyi from China won the women’s event, just ahead of the fighting GM Harika from India. The event was played in the Swiss format with the clock set at 3 minutes, with a 2 second increment after each move.

Harikrishna, ranked 25th in the world, is the second best player in India with a classical ELO rating of 2,726. But the 27-year-old was seeded 7th at the event since he was playing at a rating of 2,631 for the blitz version of the game, which he hasn’t played much in the recent past.

Harikrishna was leading the event till the 8th round, but suffered an unfortunate loss against Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son of Vietnam to fall behind in the race. The man from Guntur in Andhra Pradesh recovered quickly to score a victory over compatriot Vidit Gujarati and secure a second place finish.

The event awarded a prize money of $1500 to the winner and $1000 for the second place. In the women’s section, Harika, who achieved her GM norm in 2011, played a consistent game to pick up a silver medal and $600 as prize money.