Erigaisi shows his human touch in draw with Wei Yi

The Indian GM failed to find the key variation that could have sealed his place in the semi-finals

- Shahid Judge

India's Arjun Erigaisi during his FIDE World Cup quarter-final against Wei Yi of China.

(FIDE)

Arjun Erigaisi’s gaze shifted from the chess board to the ceiling. His glance moved across the grand hall of a posh Goan hotel, as he sat, calculating the next few possible moves, predicting his opponent's reaction, and the probability of a favourable outcome with a singular shift of a chess piece.

On the board in front of him, he had a few options. Among those was his innocuously placed white bishop that could change the course of the game. Computer engines suggested that on the 24th move the bishop be moved from g2 to d5.

The bishop would then — in all likelihood — be taken by the black queen immediately, but it would set Erigaisi on the path to a famous win in the quarterfinal of the Chess World Cup, over Chinese Grandmaster Wei Yi.

Erigaisi moved his arm to make a move, but then pulled it back down in a moment of hesitation. Once again he raised it. And then he made his move: queen from e2 to d2.

“That's a very human move,” Tania Sachdev, a member of the Indian team that won gold at the Chess Olympiad last year, said during ChessBase India's commentary.