Nepomniachtchi practically guaranteed Candidates victory after 10 rounds, the battle for second place is on

Ian Nepomniachtchi was the first to finish in Round 10 of the 14 round FIDE Candidates tournament
in Madrid. Nepomniachtchi didn’t push very hard with the white pieces against Teimour Radjabov and the
game was drawn in 37 moves. Nepomniachtchi probably already knew by that point
that his closest challenger Fabiano Caruana was going to lose and his lead
would be extended to 1.5 points. With just four rounds to go four draws is all
but certain to win the event for Nepomniachtchi, he may even be able to afford a loss.

Fabiano Caruana’s tournament has just fallen apart, he’s spent the most time at the board
and played the most moves. He just looks dog tired and today he played a sharp and risky
line and after 17 moves he was already losing against Jan-Krzysztof Duda who was having
a just terrible tournament up to here but even he couldn’t mess up this chance, although he did try.
The game should have been over around move 31 or 32 but Duda showed some unsteadiness but
32…b6?! (32…Nb3 was positively Caruana’s last chance) returned the position to dead lost
and even though Caruana commendably fought on he couldn’t save the game. Caruana will surely
have to rethink his strategy for these events – an argument could be made that he has played
the best chess at least up until a few rounds ago – but playing long games of
super sharp chess every day just isn’t working for him. He’s got his work cut out finishing
second now.

The bad news continued for Caruana as both Hikaru Nakamura and Ding Liren both won to
join him in second place. Ding was equal in an unbalance endgame against Richard
Rapport at move 40, a blunder by Rapport on move 42 handed the game to the Chinese
player, the position was deceptive as Rapport had the exchange for a pawn but ended
up in a position where the piece and pawn were just too powerful. Hikaru Nakamura
beat Alireza Firouzja in a very strange game where Firouzja took all sorts of risks
to get a bad position, nevertheless Firouzja had one opportunity with 21…a5 to have a
fair share of chances, instead the terrible 21…Bf8 sealed his fate.

With the battle for first place all but over the players will be fighting for second and the hope
that Magnus Carlsen doesn’t defend his title (as he’s strongly hinted he might not) and they’ll get a shot instead.
Unlike with a tie for first place where a tie-break match would be used, second place will be settled with
tie-break coefficients.

Official Round 10 Standings:
1 Nepomniachtchi 7pts (TB1 33),
2 Caruana 5.5pts (TB1 27.75),
3 Nakamura 5.5pts (TB1 26.25),
4 Ding Liren 5.5pts (TB1 25.25),
5 Radjabov 4.5pts (TB1 23.25),
6 Duda 4pts (TB1 20),
7 Rapport 4pts (TB1 18.5) and
8 Firouzja 4pts (TB1 18).

Round 11 Pairings 30th June 2pm BST:
Nakamura-Rapport, Firouzja-Nepomniachtchi, Radjabov-Duda and Caruana-Ding.