Havana, July 26 (JIT) - Cuban Luis Ernesto Quesada agreed a draw and remains undefeated in the Masters Tournament of the Biel Chess Festival 2023, in Switzerland, after eight of the 10 scheduled rounds have elapsed.

The player divided honors with the Chinese Yan Liu after 42 moves of a Queen's Indian Defense in which he led the white pieces. He dropped to 11th place in the rankings with an accumulated 5.5 points.

Quick exchanges of pieces in the middlegame resulted in a rook and pawn endgame, without much chance of advantage for either side. Luis Ernesto tried to press on the kingside, where he had greater strength, but was unsuccessful.

So far he has three successes and five draws against opponents with an average Elo of 2,545 points, very similar to the 2,553 that he shows in the most recent update of the ranking.

Less fortunate was the day for Cuba's Carlos Daniel Albornoz, who, playing with white pieces, lost to India's V S Rathanvel in 40 moves of a Sicilian Defense.

Apparently, the Camagüey native faced time problems in key situations of the game that forced him to make uncommon mistakes in a player of his rank. He even missed a rook move "pinning" the enemy queen, which would have radically changed the correlation of forces in his favor.

With this first defeat, Albornoz was down to five points and dropped to 17th place among the 99 players still in the competition.

China's Xiangzhi Bu could not maintain his winning streak and finished without a decision against India's Aditya Samant, but that did not affect his leadership with 6.5 units.

Behind him are six players with six points, among them Samant, Rathanvel, Liu and India's Anand Pranav, next opponent of leader Bu.

Luis Ernesto's opponent in the ninth round will be the American Robert Shlyakhtenko (5.5 points) and Albornoz will face the Indian A Ra Harikrishnan (5.5).