Bengaluru: Two years ago, Praggnanandhaa and Vaishali strode into history as the first brother-sister pair to ever play the Candidates tournament. This time, one of them is coming to terms with a missed chance, while the other is in contention for first place.
In the all-Indian clash in Round 9, Vaishali outplayed Divya Deshmukh with the white pieces, moving up to 5.5 points and into a co-lead with Zhu Jiner. It brought up Vaishali’s third win in four games. Going into Wednesday’s games, five players, including Divya, were in shared first place. Now, that group has been trimmed to just two players.
Vaishali, who chose the Reti opening (1.Nf3) and transposed to the English opening, steadily moved into an advantage on the board and the clock. Time management has been one of Vaishali’s major troubles in this tournament. In Round 9, she faced none of it. She was the one blitzing out moves and calling the shots, without having to frantically look at the clock. She played a brilliant exchange sacrifice (23. Rxd3), while Divya struggled to come up with answers or counterplay. In their first face-off in this tournament in Round 2, Divya had missed a queen sacrifice, which may have been decisive.
Praggnanandhaa and Vaishali are in a unique situation – as siblings competing at the highest level of chess. Having a strong player right across the room at home to bounce ideas off is a rare privilege. Those exchanges, however, often come with caveats.
“Sometimes you’re discussing ideas you want to play yourself,” Vaishali told Chess.com, breaking into a smile. “So, yeah, we’ll tell each other, ‘OK, this is my idea, you’re not going to play it.’…“We both have the tendency to work a lot, forgetting to take rest or breaks. So, we have to remind each other to do that.”
In the Open section, Javokhir Sindarov may have robbed the tournament of some its drama and suspense with his insane play but on Wednesday he chose to show he’s human afterall, missing a winning chance. The 20-year-old Uzbek let slip a chance to make it to six wins, after going for 24…Bxa4? instead of the winning Queen retreat move, 24…Qb7! allowing Matthias Bluebaum to secure a draw.
“Maybe I could have found it (winning move) if I took time to think, but I played fast…I felt very sad. I need to forget this round and focus on my next games,” said Sindarov.
The young Grandmaster has already won the admiration of top players with his dominant show. “My wife asked me, ‘have you ever done anything like that’?” World no. 1 Magnus Carlsen was quoted saying, referring to Sindarov’s run in the tournament so far. “I said ‘thanks for asking – not really’.” Carlsen won a total of five games in the 2013 Candidates tournament (and went on to become world champion later that year) while Sindarov won five of his first six games.
Anish Giri chose to spice things up in the standings, defeating Fabiano Caruana to take sole second place, 1.5 points behind Sindarov. “I have mathematical chances and they’re better than they were two days ago, ” Giri said, referring to his odds of winning the tournament.
After a shaky start, Giri has been playing impressive chess over the last couple of rounds, while Caruana seems to be struggling – losing two games in a row now. It’s these rounds in the second half that are particularly revealing. It’s when players have an idea what they’re playing for – first place or nothing. “Gave Fabi 30-40 per cent chance to win before the event but watching the live feed it looks like he’s totally given up at this point. Losing to Sindarov totally changed the narrative of his tournament,” fellow American Grandmaster Wesley So wrote on X.
Two-time Candidates winner Ian Nepomniachtchi was spotted at the Candidates venue in Cyprus on Wednesday. Ahead of the tournament he had picked Caruana and Praggnanandhaa as favourites for first place and declared that Nakamura has “zero chances” to win the tournament. He must be pleased with one half of his prediction.
