Bengaluru: In a day of quiet draws in Round 2 of the Candidates tournament, Divya Deshmukh missed a win against fellow Indian R Vaishali and had to settle for half a point after a few heart-stopping moments.
The game looked headed toward a peaceful end with Vaishali, playing Black, comfortably equalising in the Queen’s Gambit Declined setup. Vaishali’s decision to exchange the knights with 34.Ne4? turned out to be a blunder, almost instantly putting Divya in a winning position. It overlooked the incoming 35.Rxb7.
Vaishali knew right away that it could end badly for her. She had her palm covering her mouth, trying not to give away her anxiety. With just four seconds on the clock, Divya spotted the best move – getting her rook to surge ahead and capture Black’s b-pawn. A win was within touching distance.
The 19-year-old, however, slipped up and bungled an opportunity to take the lead in the standings after she missed a Queen sacrifice and played 37.Qg3? instead of Qg4! allowing Vaishali to steer the game towards a draw. After the game, Divya said she had spotted Vaishali’s clever queen sacrifice move on the time control (40. Qxh3+) in advance but simply missed the winning alternative Qg4!.
A couple of boards away from Vaishali, her brother Praggnanandhaa, who had an explosive start to his Candidates campaign with a win in the first round, wrapped up his game, drawing with the Black pieces against Chinese Grandmaster Wei Yi. All games – four in the open section and four in the women’s section – ended in draws on Day two.
Praggnanandhaa arrived for the Candidates in Cyprus with questions over his recent form hanging heavy. He shot them down without much ado in Round 1 – unleashing eye-popping opening preparation and outplaying Dutch Grandmaster Anish Giri in impressive fashion.
“Pragg fooled all of us by playing terribly for his standards for half a year,” German Grandmaster Jan Gustaffson chuckled on the Fide broadcast.
On Monday, Praggnanadhaa played the French Defense and Wei Yi steadily fell behind on the clock and seemed strategically worse. But Black didn’t have enough to fight for and the game ended in a draw.
After his Round 1 loss to Praggnanandhaa on Sunday, Anish Giri revealed that the 5. Bb5+ line that the Indian uncorked in the Sicilian Grand Prix Attack was the only thing in his opening file that was labelled – ‘Ignore’, by his seconds, suggesting it was unlikely to be played an opponent.
“The idea that gave Pragg pretty much a winning position by move 25 in the Petroff against (Ian) Nepomniachtchi in the last Candidates has a similar story to it,” Peter Svidler said on the broadcast.
After the tournament, Nepomniachtchi admitted to Svidler, who was the Indian’s trainer during that time, that he had all of what Praggnanandhaa chose to play, available in his opening file captioned ‘Ignore’ by his seconds, since they were certain it never come up on the board. Drawing from deep preparation and mining offbeat ideas your opponent is unlikely to have considered can make the opening battle interesting.
“The younger generation is driving this shift,” Svidler offered, “It’s a very welcome sign to see people aiming for less clarity and more fun as opposed to trying to solve the opening as a math problem.”
After his Round 1 loss to Praggnanandhaa, Giri steadied things with a draw against Fabiano Caruana, while Hikaru Nakamura again wound up playing the longest game of the day, which eventually ended in a draw.
The 38-year old American, who is in Cyprus with his wife Atousa Pourkashiyan and infant son, said that in the larger scheme of things, the Candidates doesn’t matter to him a whole lot. “I don’t feel like it’s the biggest thing in my life,” he told Chessbase India. “Some will say I’m a favourite, others will say I have zero chance. Either way I have a three-week vacation in Cyprus.”
In the Women’s Candidates, for the second successive day, all four games ended in draws. World No 2 Zhu Jiner, who was up two pawns, missed a win for the second time in a row.
Round 3 pairings (March 31)
Open
Matthias Bluebaum vs Andrey Esipenko
R Praggnanandhaa vs Javokhir Sindarov
Fabiano Caruana vs Wei Yi
Hikaru Nakamura vs Matthias Bluebaum
Women
Vaishali R vs Anna Muzychuk
Aleksandra Goryachkina vs Divya Deshmukh
Zhu Jiner vs Bibisara Assaubayeva
Tan Zhongyi vs Kateryna Lagno
