Grandmaster Arjun Erigaisi tried hard but succumbed to Hikaru Nakamura's experience as the American won handsomely to proceed to the last-four of the Freestyle chess tournament here on Thursday. Magnus Carlsen of Norway needed a draw to proceed to the next stage against Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan and the world No.1 achieved just that to move into the last-four stage along side Fabiano Caruana of the United States, who came up with a fine effort to crash through the defences of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France.

In the other quarterfinal matches, Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi drew with Vincent Keymer, forcing the match into a tie-break where the fortunes of both the players hang. It may be recalled that Keymer beat a star-studded field to emerge winner of the first edition in Weissenhaus, Germany in February. Meanwhile in the fight for the 9th to 12th spot, world champion D Gukesh and Vidit Gujrathi drew against Richard Rapport of Hungary and R Praggnanandhaa respectively and are now going to fight for the last two place. Praggnanandhaa will take on Rapport for a chance to finish in ninth spot. Erigaisi got a good chance in the middle game against Nakamura when he could have seized the initiative with a knight manoeuvre.