Candidates Chess: Praggnanandhaa held by Nakamura; no stopping Sindarov

R Praggnanandhaa was two points and four ‘net wins’ away from leader Javokhir Sindarov at the start of the sixth round of the Candidates chess tournament in Cyprus on Saturday. Though the Indian surprised Hikaru Nakamura with the choice of a Nimzo-Indian Defence and showed the intent to complicate matters along the way, the game petered out to a draw after a threefold repetition in 23 moves.As bad luck would have it, Sindarov kept on winning and making it more and more difficult for his rivals! Fabiano Caruana (4) could not beat Andrey Esipenko and now trails Sindarov by 1.5 points. Pragg is 2.5 points behind. The Uzbek World Cup winner, the youngest player in the field, like D Gukesh was when he won the Candidates and world title in 2024, defeated Wei Yi with the black pieces to jump to 5.5 points.The 20-year-old has now beaten world No. 3 Fabiano Caruana, world No.

2 Hikaru Nakamura and Chinese stalwart Wei Yi in successive games.Former five-time world champion V Anand told the FIDE webcast, “It’s just that Sindarov’s opponents are not able to play a normal game anymore.”Pragg’s sister R Vaishali and Divya Deshmukh (3 points each) completed a great day for black pieces as they defeated overnight leader Kateryna Lagno (3) and Kazakh Bibisara Assaubayeva (2.5) respectively.

Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine defeated co-leader Zhu Jiner of China with the black pieces and moved to four points in the women's section earlier in the day.Vaishali's was a wild game and Divya came up with a nice finish in the queen, rook and pawn endgame. Vaishali finally found a safe square for her king and threatened great damage on the rival’s h1 square, with queen and rook controlling the gand hfiles (two pawns up but a piece down).The Tan Zhongyi (2.5) vs Aleksandra Goryachkina (3) game ended in a draw.Iranian Amin holds CarlsenAmin Tabatabaei of Iran held Magnus Carlsen to a draw in the fourth round of the Freestyle chess at Grenke Classic in Karlsruhe, Germany, on Saturday. Carlsen, who was mobbed by fans in a festival which has attracted more than 3,500 entries across various sections, had 3/3, stretching his winning streak to 12 games counting his 9/9 performance last year. But GM Amin (Elo 2661) stopped him.