Bengaluru: R Vaishali must really start to believe her luck in this Candidates tournament. It’s seen the 24-year-old Indian survive bad positions miraculously. On Sunday, in a game where she had been suffering for most part, she was gifted an unexpected win.
Tan Zhongyi sat there, hands to her head, stewing in agony. The former women’s world champion and winner of the 2024 Women’s Candidates tournament was up on time, up a pawn, and with a winning position when she rushed in with an inexplicable 37. Ra1?? after little over a minute’s thought.
It had her walking right into a landmine double attack. A one-move blunder from which there was no way back. Vaishali, who perhaps could scarcely believe the position she had been gifted, was quick to devour Black’s bishop and rook in the next couple of moves and she had a win and a full point.
“I just went blank,” Vaishali told chess.com, recounting her emotions when she saw Tan play 37. Ra1. “I thought if I’m winning this position, what is this? I just feel very bad for her (Tan).”
After being worse for most of the game, Vaishali, playing White, found a glimmer of hope for a possible drawing chance after Tan played 27.Ne4. To the Indian’s relief, it wasn’t the last bad choice of the day by Tan.
Now at the halfway mark of the tournament, Vaishali is just half-a-point behind leader Anna Muzychuk. “Game quality is important for me so I’m not very happy. From the opening it was just a bad position, bad game. My main focus will be to improve my game quality in the remaining games,” Vaishali said.
It’s her second win in a row in this tournament. In the 2024 edition, Vaishali won five games in a row towards the end of the tournament. The fight for first place is pretty close among the women, and there’s no player on a rampaging run yet.
Not quite the storyline in the Open section.
Vaishali’s brother R Praggnanandhaa, along with world No.3 Fabiano Caruana, are part of the chasing pack with 20-year-old Javokhir Sindarov in the lead with an impressive six points out of seven. The tournament heads into its home stretch post Monday’s rest day.
Playing Black, Anish Giri managed to stop Sindarov’s winning run, and their game ended in a 85-move draw. Though Sindarov kept pressing, the Dutchman put up a great defence, sacrificing an exchange to find a fortress and force a theoretically drawn bishop and two pawns versus rook and two pawns. “Today maybe an engine shows it’s equal, but for a human it’s really a very unpleasant position to play with Black. So, I understand I’m playing for two results, so why not push this position?” Sindarov said.
Giri and Praggnanandhaa are now on 3.5 points, while Caruana is a full point ahead, second in the standings behind Sindarov. Playing against Caruana with the White pieces, Praggnanandhaa chose the Queen’s Pawn opening and the American responding with the Slav defense deviated from main theory with 7.Na6. It’s a move that’s been played only a handful of times in the position, twice by another Candidates participant—Matthias Bluebaum, in 2015 and 2020. The Indian slowed down, taking time to ponder every move thereafter, falling behind on the clock. Steadily, he fell an hour behind his opponent.
With 27 minutes on his clock to 90 minutes for Caruana, the Indian still managed to find the best move—27.h4 attempting to stop Black’s advance of pawns and creating a nice square for his king. After h4, it was Caruana’s turn to pause for a bit and think. Though a draw isn’t the worst result, neither will be happy to have missed a full point. The number of rounds remaining to recover and put up a fight for first place is only going to get fewer now.
The only decisive game of the day in the Open section was between Andrey Esipenko and Wei Yi, which the Chinese Grandmaster went on to win. World No.2 Hikaru Nakamura’s struggles and the winless run in the tournament though continued with him drawing against Bluebaum.
