Bengaluru:Praggnanandhaa looked away from the board. The walls had closed in and the lights on his chances of saving the game, had gone out. His opponent, fellow 20-year-old and long-time rival, Uzbekistan’s Javokhir Sindarov had set up a nice little trap that the Indian walked right into.
He had lured White’s Queen away leaving its light-squared bishop on the c2 square unmanned. Sindarov then deployed his rook to gobble up the bishop (35. Rxc2+), delivering a check, and went on to defeat Praggnanandhaa, co-leading the Candidates tournament with world No 3 Fabiano Caruana at 2.5 points from three rounds. The win also shot Sindarov to world No 8 in the live ratings,
Playing with the White pieces, Praggnanandhaa switched things up and opened with 1.d4, the Queen’s pawn opening (he had played 1.e4 against Anish Giri in Round 1) and Sindarov responded with 2.d5, leading soon to the Queen’s Gambit Declined setup on the board.
The first 10 moves of the game followed the main line played in Game 8 of the 2014 World Championship between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen. That game had ended in a draw. Carlsen, playing with the Black pieces, had managed to equalise pretty easily.
It’s the first loss of the tournament for the Indian, and not a pleasant one. Especially perhaps since it comes against a player with whom he has a bit of a shared history. Rivals and contemporaries, barely out of their teens, Praggnanandhaa and Sindarov have been facing each other at tournaments for well over a decade now.
They first played each other in the world under-8 tournament. From their boyhood years through adolescence – and now, at 20, as they vie for a place in chess’s summit match – they have long battled for the same prizes. In their early years, the Indian often got the better of the Uzbek at youth tournaments. As 12-year-olds, they were locked in a race to break Sergey Karjakin’s record as the youngest-ever Grandmaster. In 2018, Praggnanandhaa became a Grandmaster at 12 years, 10 months, and 13 days. Four months later, Sindarov achieved the title at 12 years, 10 months, and 8 days, surpassing the Indian prodigy’s mark by five days.
In their game on Tuesday, Sindarov made a strategic long-term piece sacrifice, offering up his knight with an eye on White’s King. It left Praggnanadhaa up on material but the initiative appeared to rest with the Uzbek. The Indian made a decisive mistake with 19.Qc3 and it was pretty much downhill from there. Though a piece down, Black’s pieces were nicely positioned with its pawns limiting White’s pieces. White’s pieces, though, seemed uncomfortable in their squares with the King unguarded and flitting from square to square in search of cover. Defense not being Praggnananandhaa’s strongest suit, White was eventually lost against Black’s Kingside attack.
If the 2023 World Cup was Praggnanandhaa’s moment of reckoning – becoming the only Indian after Viswanathan Anand to reach the final – the 2025 edition was Sindarov’s stomping ground. At 19, he became both the youngest and the lowest seed to win the tournament.
The breakout star of 2025, Sindarov lost just two classical games out of 54 last year – one of them to Praggnanandhaa at the UzChess Cup in Tashkent in June, a tournament the Indian went on to win. “In Tashkent, I think he prepared very well and I completely forgot my line,” Sindarov told Lichess. “But here (Candidates) I think I’m well prepared.”
Sindarov partly attributed his rating jump and successes last year to a tweak in his playing style. “I started playing pretty solid last year. I like this style, where you play solid and take the chances you get. If you look at my games, I still play aggressive. I can play the King’s Indian against anyone for a win and can play solid against some players when needed.”
In the other decisive game of the day, Caruana found his second win in three rounds to live up to his ‘tournament favourite’ billing. He fashioned a crushing win in 19 moves after the Chinese Grandmaster Wei Yi blundered.
“I never expected it (17.Ne5) to happen because he (Wei Yi) never usually makes mistakes of this gravity,” Caruana told Chess.com. “Unfortunately for him, it was not just a blunder where you have some chances to fight, but a blunder where you lose a piece immediately and that is the entire game.”
In the Women’s Candidates, Bibisara Assaubayeva took down top seed and tournament favourite Zhu Jiner with the Black pieces, ringing in the first decisive result of the competition in three rounds. While India’s Divya Deshmukh managed a great escape from the clutches of defeat against Aleksandra Goryachkina.
