Grandmaster D. Gukesh again achieved a hard-fought draw and made peace with number one seed and local hero Fabiano Caruana, while Frenchman Alireza Firouzja extended his lead to a full point after the seventh round of the Sinquefield Cup, which is part of the Grand Chess Tour.

The other Indian in the match, R. Praggnanandhaa, drew his seventh consecutive match to remain at 50%. Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi was satisfied with a quick draw as Praggnanandhaa decided to conserve his energy.

With two rounds left, Firouzja, who defeated world champion Ding Liren of China, has five points and Caruana is still a full point behind him.

No fewer than five players – Wesley So from the USA, Nodirbek Abdusattorov from Uzbekistan, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave from France, Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa – share third place with 3.5 points each.

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Liren and Nepomniachtchi are half a point behind, while Dutchman Anish Giri remains at the bottom of the table with 2.5 points.

In addition to Firouzja’s victory, Abdusattorov interrupted So’s party with a calm performance. In the other match of the day, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Giri shared a draw.

Gukesh continued to play uncompromisingly, but found Caruana sufficiently prepared in an Italian opening game.

In the following endgame the Indian was much worse, but Caruana missed the opportunity to gain a real advantage on his 39th move.

Regular player substitutions secured a draw for the Indians.

Praggnanandhaa, playing white, had no chance against Nepomniachtchi’s Russian Defense and the player from Chennai had to settle for repetitions of moves very early in the middle game. The game lasted only 19 moves.

The day belonged to Firouzja, who showed excellent resources in a complicated middlegame against Liren.

The Italian opening went well for the Frenchman and he lost a few pawns when Liren made a mistake in the middlegame and let White in. The rest was easy.