Leaders Emerge After Candidates Round 3

The most shocking game of the third round was GM Fabiano Caruana’s 19-move win against GM Wei Yi. After willingly entering his opponent’s preparation, Caruana ended up down 50 minutes on the clock in a highly unclear position.

Photo courtesy FIDE/Michal Walusza.

However, Wei Yi did not seem ready for such a turn of events, and sunk into thought himself, made two serious mistakes, and ended up losing a piece for no compensation. What had promised to be a tense and exciting game ended without a fight:

Photo courtesy FIDE/Michal Walusza.

As a result, Caruana now co-leads the event with 2½/3 – a great start. He is joined at the top by GM Javokhir Sindarov (now ranked eighth in the world), who sacrificed a piece against Praggnanandhaa and was rewarded for his bravery:

The two leaders are currently facing each other in Round 4, with Sindarov taking the white pieces. It will be interesting to see how that matchup plays out, as neither player has shown themselves averse to taking risks, regardless of color.

The other two games – Nakamura vs. Giri and Bluebaum vs. Esipenko – ended in relatively peaceful draws.

Graphic courtesy of FIDE

Yesterday, I enjoyed analyzing the rook endgame in Esipenko – Nakamura, in particular because of the great understanding shown by Hikaru. So, I was surprised today when a nearly identical endgame appeared in the game between GM Aleksandra Goryachkina and GM Divya Deshmukh.

Photo courtesy FIDE/Michal Walusza.

Roughly speaking, the position in Goryachkina’s game is what could have happened in Nakamura’s game had Hikaru continued defending passively; in my report, I had concluded that such a position would be lost for Black. However, Goryachkina didn’t seem familiar with yesterday’s game and failed to find the correct path:

GM Vaishali Rameshbabu’s game against GM Anna Muzychuk was an interesting but well-played draw. That left us with two decisive games for the Women’s section. The first, GM Tan Zhongyi’s game against GM Katerina Lagno, shows why you should never resign:

Tan Lagno — Photos courtesy FIDE/Michal Walusza (L) and FIDE/Yoav Nis.

Tan — Photos courtesy FIDE/Michal Walusza (L) and FIDE/Yoav Nis.

Many players wonder how mistakes of this nature can happen in a tournament as prestigious as the Candidates, but in fact it is only in the Candidates that mistakes like this are likely to happen: each player faces unprecedented stress and pressure, and the tournament becomes as much a battle of nerves as a pure assessment of chess strength.

That was on display in GM Zhu Jiner’s game against GM Bibisara Assaubayeva, the final game of today’s report. Assaubayeva played an extremely aggressive line to meet Zhu Jiner’s Sicilian Rossolimo, but Zhu played very precisely and emerged from the opening with a clearly superior position.

Undeterred, Assaubayeva continued to play confidently and pose significant practical challenges for her opponent. In the end, it only took a couple of mistakes by Zhu for Assaubayeva to seize the initiative and win the game:

Since all games in the first two rounds of the Women’s tournament were draws, Assaubayeva and Lagno now share the lead with 2/3 scores.