Kerala’s Nihal Sarin outperforms top GMs, including Carlsen, in marathon online event

Young Indian Grandmaster Nihal Sarin was the standout performer in the latest edition of the popular online chess event, Titled Tuesday. The 20-year-old from Thrissur in Kerala had the best finish (combined) among all competitors, including Magnus Carlsen, across both legs of the weekly blitz competition hosted by Chess Dot Com, the most popular online chess platform.

Nihal finished runner-up to Serbian Alexey Sarana in the 'early' edition of the Titled Tuesday and finished in top-7 in the 'late' edition. By comparison, World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen was third in the 'late' edition and 10th in the 'early' one.

The 'early' event that began at 9.30 pm on Tuesday had 740 participants and the 'late' event started at 3.30 am on Wednesday, with 486 participants. Nihal is the youngest of the three Grandmasters in Kerala, the others being G N Gopal and S L Narayanan.

Nihal made a disastrous start to the 'early' event when he blundered in the middle game in round one against lower-rated Russian Candidate Master Evgenij Novikov and lost. But he bounced back to win nine of his next ten rounds and drew the odd one.

Among those Nihal defeated were experienced Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Polish GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda, and Dutchman Benjamin Bok, who won the 'late' event. Nihal was tied on 9.5 points with Sarana and Vietnam's Tuan Minh Le. Sarana edged the others by virtue of a better tie-break score. Carlsen finished on 8.5 points.

Nihal made a solid start to the 'late' event, winning his first six rounds, but lost to French star Alireza Firouzja in round eight and to American Daniel Naroditsky in the penultimate round to finish on 8.5 points.

ChessDotCom hosts 'early' and 'late' events to accommodate players from different time zones worldwide. Each 11-round event lasts about 3 hours, so one might wonder if these top players ever managed to rest in between.