MUMBAI: Indian Grandmaster Pentala Harikrishna struck gold at the recently-concluded European Club Cup chess meet in Bilbao, Spain. Playing for the Czech club G-Team Novy Bor Harikrishna became the first Indian to top the competition and, in the process, helped his team finish second.
The European Club Cup is one of the strongest meets and is dubbed as the ‘Champions League of chess’. The best clubs from European nation, al leagues participate in this tournament with strong line-ups. This year, too, the field was very strong.
Except World champion Magnus Carlsen, Indian maestro Viswanathan Anand and a few others, who were taking part in the Bilbao Masters meet, all other top players of the world were on the roster of various teams.
Among the big names who featured in different teams were GMs Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, Michael Adams of England, Alexander Grischuk of Russia, Fabiano Caruana of Italy and Hikaru Nakamura of the USA.
Harikrishna, who had 2852 performance rating points in the meet, secured six points out of a maximum seven in his maiden appearance for Novy Bor to be adjudged the best player on Board 3 and claimed the gold medal.
“I am happy with my show since the tournament was very tough and there was no easy match,” Harikrishna, who returned home on Monday, told TOI.
The other Indians who played in the tournament were Bengal GMs Sandipan Chanda (for SG Solingen of Germany) and Surya Sekhar Ganguly (for Solvay of Spain).
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Nakamura is way better.