Erigaisi rises to the second position in the world: Following his victory over Aleksey Sarana in Round 3 of the Chennai Grand Masters on Thursday, Arjun Erigaisi rose to the second position in the global rankings. The only person now ranked higher than him is Magnus Carlsen, a five-time world champion. The 21-year-old Indian is currently at 2805.8, having last month become just the sixteenth player in history to surpass 2800 Elo in live ratings before slipping and failing to carry the achievement over to the November published rankings. The only Indian to date to reach the 2800 threshold on the published list is Viswanathan Anand.
Arjun has dominated everything in his path, soared through the rankings, and made a strong argument for a seat at the next Candidates. He has had a tremendous year thus far. In a recent interview with HT, Arjun talked about how Gukesh’s victory on his first try inspired him and gave him hope that he could achieve the same.
Erigaisi rises to the second position in the world:
If Arjun wins the eight-player single round robin Chennai Grand Masters, he will collect 24.5 points, putting him in the lead in the Fide Circuit rankings, which is one of the routes to the Candidates. In order to qualify for the Candidates, D Gukesh, who will compete in the World Championship later this month, defeated Arjun in a tiebreak to win the first Chennai Grand Masters championship last year.
Arjun’s bold, high-risk, high-reward strategy has so far this year yielded significant profits.
Dutch general manager Anish Giri posted on X on Thursday, saying, “Arjun plays a unique brand of chess which people following with modern engines can’t understand.” Even though he participated in numerous open tournaments, the Warangal Super GM has barely lost this season.
