2026 Candidates
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Rd 9 In the women's Zhu used the good knight over the bishop against Lahno to win.
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In the women's Vaishali's tactics in a closed positon to create unstoppable passed pawns dealt death to Divya Deshmukh's hopes. A key win.
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Rd 9 Pragga played all the exclam moves against Wei Yi but at the right moment couldn't find the trigger. Draw. A narrow escape for Wei Yi.
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Sindarov draws and is now 7 out of 9. Giri wins the battle for second and has 5.5, Caruana 4.5. Giri is now 1.5 behind Sindarov and is the only player (I think) who has a slight chance in catching him.
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In the Bluebaum Sindarov game at move 24 Sindarov could have played Qb7 This is not a move that requires supreme calculation. Every attacker knows you must keep the queens on for a successful king attack. I think Sindarov was fully aware but wanted to play it safe. He had a comfortable edge even with queen's off and as it turned out this was the difference between winning and drawing.
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I wonder how Giri felt after playing Kh6? - and did he say something witty about that afterwards (probably) A Giri moment.
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Rd 9 Gripping games! In the battle for second I was admiring Giri's play. It was almost as if he was playing by principles. Occupy the f4 square with the knight, and then exchange it for a bishop causing doubled E pawns. Take the A -file and threaten along the seventh rank. Play the late middle game with good bishop over ineffective knight. Exploit small weaknesses and play for small advantages. That sort of thing. But it was only good for an 0.5 advantage according to the computer. It wasn't until the endgame when Caruana got aggressive with his king (Kg4) that Giri broke thru in spectacular fashion. Eye popping even. After Kg4 the pawn break f5!! ordinarily a good break, is killing! The point is the white king is trapped and after captures e4!! forks the white queen or traps the white king in checkmate!
Ironically Caruana's game against Bluebaum comes to mind where checkmate was delivered with a pawn. Delicious.
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