New Delhi: Grandmaster P Harikrishna finished second in the Carlos Torre Memorial knockout chess tournament after losing to World No 2 Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine 1-3 in the final in Mexico.
Harikrishna played impressively throughout the event and even beat Ivanchuk in one of the Classical games before he was beaten in the tiebreaker.
Harikrishna started the event with a 1.5-0.5 victory over Gilberto Hernandez of Mexico and drew the second game with difficulty. In the second round, German GM Meier Georg was at the receiving end against the Indian.
In the semi-finals, Harikrishna defeated Jesus Nogueiras of Cuba winning the second game in impressive fashion to eventually win by a 0.5-1.5 margin.
In the first game of the final, Harikrishna failed to find his rhythm against Ivanchuk and went down. In the second game the Indian yet again came up with a superlative performance and outplayed the second highest rated player in the world to set the stage for tiebreak games.
However, Ivanchuk's immense experience in shorter version of the game came in handy as he won both the games.
Speaking about his performance Harikrishna said that he was quite satisfied with his result.
"It was a tough tournament and recently I did not do well in the knockout format in the world cup, I guess this was much better than world cup," he said.
Harikrishna also stands to gain around eight points from his performance in Mexico, which will take him nearer to the 2700 ELO rating mark. The Indian has a long tour ahead as he will now move to Reggio Emilia in Italy for a high category event and then proceed to play Corus Chess tournament.
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