It’s a thing with R Vaishali. If she’s on a winning run, she can be an unstoppable force. In Round 11 on Saturday, the 24-year-old appeared to be playing out a peaceful game with the Black pieces against Aleksandra Goryachkina.
The Queens had been exchanged, Vaishali had a comfortable position, White had no ambitious plans, and a draw seemed the most likely result.
Vaishali, with a half-point lead at the top, didn’t necessarily need to conjure up action on the board. But Vaishali chose to do Vaishali things. She set up a clever trap for White’s rook and her unsuspecting opponent walked right into it.
The Russian played 30…Bc4 – the most natural move in the position. The evaluation bar vociferously disagreed. The blunder soon dawned upon Goryachkina. She placed her hand over her mouth, scarcely able to believe her eyes. Her rook was trapped in the centre of the board with no escape squares. Vaishali was leaning in. She already had it all mapped out. She took barely a minute to blitz out 30…Bc6 and Goryachkina knew it was all over – she was down an exchange in a rook endgame with no light at the end of the tunnel.
‘I didn’t see 25…Rff5 as an option. Only when she played it I realised I can play 25…Rxe5 and 26…g6. I made sure I’m really threatening this, else the rook on e5 can become active. Then I saw this 28…Kf8 trick,’ Vaishali told the chess.com broadcast.
This is Vaishali’s fourth win in six games and it takes her to a clear one-point lead in the Women’s Candidates with just three rounds remaining. Both Zhu Jiner and Anna Muzychuk, who are in second place in the standings, drew their respective games on Saturday.
In the Open section, all four games were drawn with tournament leader Javokhir Sindarov finding his way out of a worse position against world No.3 Fabiano Caruana. Sindarov being in an inferior position in a game being such a rare sight in the Candidates so far had five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand quip, “Imagine the shock to the system for Sindarov because he’s forgotten that even his opponents can make moves.”
The 20-year-old Uzbek remains undefeated with a two-point lead and the World Championship match in sight. For pre-tournament favourite Caruana to even tie with Sindarov he would have to win all his remaining games and Sindarov would have to lose the next three games.
Praggnanandhaa had his chances and tried to mount an attack with the White pieces against Matthias Bluebaum. But it eventually petered out to a draw.
In a tournament as one-sided as this has been, the rest of the field seem to be making peace with their results.
“Luckily, I’m close to the end of my career than the beginning so it’s actually not that big a deal, especially since it relates to classical chess,” said world No.2 Hikaru Nakamura. “But yeah, since Round 5 I certainly haven’t had any chance to win the tournament, so you just play game after game.”