IM Aronyak Ghosh outlasts Polish GM over six-game marathon; 17 Indians in Round 2

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Aronyak Ghosh Chess World Cup Aronyak Ghosh advanced to Round 2 after winning the tiebreak against Polish GM Mateusz Barte. (FIDE/Eteri Kublashvili)

International master Aronyak Ghosh defeated Mateusz Bartel in a six-game marathon on Monday to be one of 17 Indians in the second round of the FIDE World Cup.

The contest included two classical games, two with 15 minutes on the clock and two more games with 10 minutes. The Indian IM’s victory over Bartel sets up a clash with Levon Aronian. The other significant result of the day was IM Faustino Oro defeating Croatian grandmaster Ante Brkic in a battle lasting eight games. Oro will now play India’s Vidit Gujrathi in the second round.

Round 2 will start on Tuesday with top Indian stars like world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, R Praggnanandhaa and Arjun Erigaisi entering the fray for the first time at the 2025 edition of the tournament.

Aronyak is one of India’s strongest IMs and on the verge of becoming a grandmaster, having already collected two norms and crossed the 2500-rating threshold. He lost the first classical game on Saturday, but forced the battle into tiebreaks with a win on demand on Sunday in the second classical game.

Then in the tiebreaks on Monday, he won the first game in the 15-minute rapid segment but found himself needing to fight for another two more games after losing the reverse encounter in that format. Then, with a time control of 10 minutes for each player, he won both his games to become the only IM from India to make the cut for the second round.

Tiebreak results for Indians:Narayanan SL beat Rojas Salas Steven 3-1; Lalit Babu MR lost 3-4 to Max Warmerdam, Aronyak Ghosh beat Bartel Mateusz 4-2, Diptayan Ghosh beat Peng Xiongjian 3-1, Raja Rithvik R lost to 3-4 to Nogerbek Kazybek.

Round 2 pairings for Indians: Gukesh D vs Nogerbek Kazybek, Arjun Erigaisi vs Martin Petrov, Praggnanandhaa R vs Kuybokarov Temur, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave vs Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Diptayan Ghosh vs Ian Nepomniachtchi, Levon Aronian vs international master Aronyak Ghosh, Vidit Santosh Gujrathi vs Faustino Oro, Karthik Venkataraman vs Aravindh Chithambaram, Nihal Sarin vs Stamatis Kourkoulos-Arditis, Pentala Harikrishna vs Arseniy Nesterov, Iniyan Pa vs Nguyen Thai Dai Van, Karthikeyan Murali vs Pouya Idani, Narayanan SL vs Nikita Vitiugov, Pranesh M vs Dmitrij Kollars, Pranav V vs Aryan Tari, Raunak Sadhwani vs Robert Hovhannisyan.