Candidates: R Vaishali makes most of second life offered by time-muddled Tan, to score second successive win; Moves to second spot | Chess News

Tan had thirty-seven minutes and forty-two seconds to respond. The position was +3, a clean winning advantage, the kind of edge that usually converts itself. This wasn’t a sharp tactical mess but a slow and positional death for Vaishali, and Tan had all the time in the world to administer it.

R Vaishali in action against China’s Tan Zhongyi at Candidates.. (FIDE/Yoav Nis)

A move later, Tan waited and took nearly twenty minutes to come up with a response. And when she made it, it was inaccurate. Not a blunder but just inaccurate enough to let the position exhale. Neutralised. Suddenly, impossibly, Vaishali had a second life.

A few more moves later, Vaishali’s expressions began changing. Her hand stayed over her mouth. But her eyes started moving faster, scanning the edges of the board, then the edges of the room. A few strokes of deep breath as well. She adjusted her spectacles in a way that did not look intentional. The poker face held, just barely but the body language was less convincing.

Across the board, Tan’s face did not hold at all. A new pallor had settled in. She put her right hand on her head and left it there. A gesture of disappointment recognising itself in real time. She knew what she had done. Not because the clock had pressured her, as it hadn’t. Also, it was not because the position demanded something impossible. It was simply an oversight from her which swindled the game in the Indian’s favour as Tan had blundered a whole piece.

Tan’s rook move to a1 was the opening Vaishali needed. She sacrificed her own rook, captured the Chinese’s dark-squared bishop, and walked away with an extra bishop in a winning endgame. Vaishali rode the luck, one which she didn’t create, but latched onto it with both hands.

Tan stretched the game to 51 moves before finally folding as Vaishali won her second win in as many rounds.

This pretty much sums up the women’s event as just two rounds ago, Vaishali was tied for last place, but now she trails the leader, Ukraine’s Anna Muzychuk, by only half a point. The last-minute replacement of India’s Koneru Humpy, Muzychuk, played a draw with Kazakhstan’s Bibisara Assaubayeva, while the game between Zhu Jiner and Aleksandra Goryachkina also ended with a decisive result.

Pragg’s exciting plan

With mounting pressure on R Praggnanandhaa to try to close the gap on Uzbek prodigy Javokhir Sindarov, the lone Indian in the Open event came up with an exciting plan.

Playing white in the Slav Defense against the most experienced player in the lineup in the seventh round, American Fabiano Caruana, Praggnanandhaa sacrificed his knight on a central square to gain some initiative.

When Caruana captured the knight on e5 with his own knight, he likely expected a simple trade of pieces. Instead, Praggnanandhaa castled kingside, allowing Caruana to keep the extra piece. The Indian was eyeing a queen trade instead, hoping to win his piece back a few moves later. Pragg executed this plan with perfection.

Praggnanandhaa in action at the Candidates. (FIDE/Michal Walusza)

But to commit to this sequence, he fell nearly an hour behind on the clock. Against a player of Caruana’s class, who himself was trying to narrow the gap with Sindarov, the position held no real demons. Although Praggnanandhaa took his chances today, Caruana simply shut the door, refusing to allow any inroads. The hard grind finally ended in a threefold repetition after 38 moves.

In the game against the runaway leader Sindarov, Anish Giri displayed a defensive masterclass that even the Uzbek phenom couldn’t breach.

At the stroke of 40 moves, the time control, Giri was down by over an hour to Sindarov, but he remained remarkably resourceful against the fired-up Uzbek juggernaut.

In the Queen’s Gambit Declined, Giri never let the game slip from his grasp. The long, ruthless grind lasted 85 moves and ended without a decisive result, as both players exchanged all their pieces, leaving themselves with no material to force checkmate.

After four consecutive wins against Praggnanandhaa, Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, and Wei Yi, Sindarov was finally held to a draw.

China’s Wei Yi made a comeback against Russia’s Andrey Esipenko, condemning him to his third loss. This was Wei Yi’s first win of the event after losing to Caruana and Sindarov.

At the halfway mark, Sindarov sits on 6.0/7, holding a comfortable 1.5-point lead over Caruana and a two-point lead over Praggnanandhaa and Giri.