Bengaluru: R Vaishali has two rounds and a job to do in the Women’s Candidates tournament. In Round 12 on Sunday, the 24-year-old Indian needed at least a draw to hold on to her sole lead. Zhu Jiner though had her plans in place. “I knew I had to play for a win today,” said the world No.2 and highest-rated player in the women’s section. Zhu stuck to her plan, cleverly navigating the off-beat idea Vaishali uncorked in the opening and finding a way to improve her position, before eventually threatening a mate-in-one. With the defeat, Vaishali gave up her sole lead, allowing Zhu to catch up with her for a shared lead.
Playing with the White pieces, Vaishali unleashed a fairly unusual opening idea in the Caro-Kann (5.cxd3) recapturing on d3 with the pawn, leading to doubling her d-pawns. Turns out, it didn’t come as a total surprise for Zhu. “I saw a similar position in my preparation files…it’s an interesting position to play.”
White seemed to gain control in the centre with a nice space advantage but it wasn’t without creating some weak light squares. Vaishali’s struggle with managing her time returned and she was forced to make critical decisions with seconds on her clock. She made a critical mistake with 36.Nc1 and Zhu pushed her pawn to h3, activating multiple attacks with both the Black queen and knight ready to spring into action.
In her final two rounds, Vaishali plays Tan Zhongyi and Kateryna Lagno, two players who she has already defeated in this tournament. In their previous face-off, Tan had possibly one of the worst collapses of the event – going from a winning position to missing an elementary tactic and blundering a full piece. Zhu has had eight decisive games in 12 rounds. “I play risky…I play for wins.” Zhu and Vaishali are interestingly the highest rated and lowest rated players in the women’s field.
It looked like a three-way tie at the top was imminent with Anna Muzychuk in a winning position against Aleksandra Gorychkina on Sunday. But the Ukrainian grandmaster fumbled and Goryachkina escaped with a stalemate trick.
The play in the women’s Candidates has been inconsistent with no player really putting up a dominant show. 2024 Women’s Candidates winner and former women’s world champion Tan has surprisingly had a horror tournament, finding her first win in 12 rounds only on Sunday.
Monday is a rest day before the players return to play the final two rounds. Vaishali, who has picked up a bit of a reputation as a streaky player, will not want to let this defeat colour her approach in the remaining two games.
In the Open section, it’s still Javokhir Sindarov in clear lead.
The 20-year-old appeared to have arrived for his Round 12 game with the idea of playing for a draw with the White pieces against Hikaru Nakamura. Two points ahead of the field with just two rounds to go, it was a sensible plan. An opposite coloured bishop ending was on the board just five minutes into the game and it wasn’t long before the queens came off. World No.2 Nakamura didn’t have qualms agreeing to a quiet 33-move draw which was wrapped up in 35 minutes.
“I’ll probably go back to my room and play video games,” Sindarov, a Counter-strike junkie, told chess.com right after, chuckling. “Probably everyone was waiting for an interesting fight from me. But I didn’t see any reason to play a crazy game against the world No.2 player in this situation. Of course, if he tried to beat me, I was ready for a fight.”
Praggnanandhaa, who’s had a pretty disappointing tournament, and was long ruled out for first place, played out a draw with Andrey Esipenko after a wild opening. Unlike that of his sister Vaishali, the 20-year-old’s tournament fizzled out right after his opening round win against Anish Giri. He hasn’t won a game since.
