With this clever move, Sevian establishes a slight advantage, fixing up a large pawn center for himself. The pawn advance is possible due to a queen check at the black king in the extreme corner of the board, thus preventing Black's dark-colored bishop from capturing White's advanced pawn in the center.
With his light-colored bishop earning some breathing space, Black has somewhat cut down his passivity. this improving his position to some extent. Now, White has to play accurately to preserve a slight advantage that he still possesses.
What we have in front of us is an unorthodox position, where regular rules of chess do not apply! Even though White seems to have a space advantage, he has a problem with his king position. Even though the black king's position looks precarious, he cannot be attacked easily.
All in all, a fascinating game on the cards today!
It's almost a miracle that Arjun has managed to wriggle out of a passive opening setup, and has actually levelled the position. He is up in the clock too, which means that he may be having the psychological upper hand here.
It is Arjun who can look forward to the kingside with enthusiasm here, as White's pieces in the kingside cannot create any effective play. Instead, Black can actually look forward to increasing his initiative on the kingside.
White's bishop file pawn falls now, enabling Black to conduct an attack on White's kingside. What a turnaround of events!
Typical of his style, Arjun turns his attention on the white king and aims to crash through on the kingside. Black's advantage is obvious now, without much of a counterplay chance for White.
Black conducted the final stretch of the game quite flawlessly.
Arjun started the game on a wrong foot, getting a passive position in the opening and facing White's initiative. However, he slowly pulled himself together, extracting all his pieces - especially his king - out of a mess, and settling them down to reasonable squares in the middlegame.
He was helped by Sevian's play on the queenside, where the White pieces found activity but no target. Finally, Arjun did his favourite part, bringing all his pieces to the kingside and finally pushing for a breakthrough which he ultimately achieved.
With this crucial win, Arjun has jumped to tie for the third-fourth places on three points along with Caruana, behind Nakamura and Niemann. He has only one game remaining, where he will take on Ray Robson.