Bengaluru: Twenty-year-old Javokhir Sindarov is doing almighty, astonishing things at the Candidates tournament. He won his four straight game in Cyprus on Saturday and is now on 5.5 points from six rounds. It’s the sort of performance that hasn’t been seen at such a high-stakes event since Veselin Topalov’s 6.5/7 at the 2005 Fide World Championship.
R Praggnanandhaa—the lone Indian in the open section, drew by three-fold repetition against world No.2 Hikaru Nakamura, and trails Sindarov by 2.5 points. Sindarov defeated Wei Yi with the Black pieces, in a game in which the latter seemed to have a reasonable position before faltering due to a few questionable choices and running low on time.
Sindarov’s preparation has been the subject of much admiration, with him being able to almost play any line with a fair bit of conviction. “Sometimes my intuition tells me to play fast, but I know I need to calculate every move,” he said, referring to Garry Kasparov speaking of the belief in one’s intuition that comes with such a dominating performance.
There are still eight rounds to go, but with Sindarov on a run like the bulls in Pamplona, there might not be a whole lot of time for the rest to catch up. Nakamura was battered by Sindarov on Friday after he lost his way on move 12. “Hikaru was my idol. I loved his games and was a big fan of the King’s Indian which he played in most of his games,” Sindarov told Chess.com, “I have a photo with him from 2012, when I was a little boy. It’s probably in my dad’s computer. I have a photo with Fabi (Caruana) too from 2012.”
Nakamura is currently at just 2.5 points, while Caruana, who was held to a draw by Andrey Esipenko, is 1.5 points behind Sindarov.
Playing with the White pieces against Praggnanandhaa, Nakamura chose the Queen’s pawn opening and the Indian in response employed the Nimzo-Indian Defense with Black but deviated from the usual idea of giving up the bishop pair. On the broadcast stream, International Master Tania Sachdev spoke of the 6.Ba5 line played by Praggnanandhaa being prepared in one of the Team India camps for the Chennai Olympiad. “It’s not the most thematic or popular approach but it’s a very interesting one-game option. With the whole structure of trapping your bishop for this dynamic Rb1, the knight often comes to a6 and things get wild in this opening.”
The world No.2 American seemed quick to trade and soon it was three Black pawns on a march versus two for White on the queenside.
Things got to a point where Nakamura repeated moves, extending a draw offer. Praggnanandhaa took some time to weigh his options in a scenario where things could get tricky for Black if he chose to play on. Eventually, he opted for pragmatism and half a point.
For all his practical strength, Nakamura has barely got a game in this Candidates. His last major classical tournament was the Norway Chess in June last year and it’s only understandable if he’s rusty. He got into the Candidates via the rating spot route which allows players to participate in what’s referred to as ‘Mickey Mouse’ tournaments in order to fulfil the required number of games. Nakamura played a bunch of small tournaments across North America to tick that box. Thankfully, Fide has seen reason and decided to do away the rating spot for the 2028 Candidates.
In the Women’s Candidates, both Indian players—R Vaishali and Divya Deshmukh got their first wins of the tournament. Kateryna Lagno, playing White, had little choice but to resign with Vaishali’s Queen and rook laying siege on her King, while Bibisara Assaubayeva, down to four pawns versus six and a King with no refuge, too lost with White, against Divya. The women’s contest seems a lot closer with Ukrainian Grandmaster Anna Muzychuk, who was invited as a replacement for Koneru Humpy roughly a week before the start of the tournament, in a one-point lead over the rest of the field. She won the battle against co-leader Zhu Jiner in Round 5 to take sole lead at 4 points. Vaishali and Divya are at three points each.
