The Week in Chess

Ian Nepomniachtchi opened up a one point lead going into the first rest day of the resumed Candidates tournament in Yekaterinburg. In the tenth round Nepomniachtchi had a relatively easy victory against Kirill Alekseenko who looked thoroughly dejected afterwards. The remaining games were drawn. Not only does Nepomniachtchi lead but he has white against his main rivals Fabiano Caruana (in Round 11) and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (in Round 13). He will however have to negotiate a potentially very tricky final round game against Ding Liren with black if it comes to that.

Nepomniachtchi played the English and caught Alekseenko unprepared and he quickly was completely lost. Alekseenko said afterwards "It was an awful game, I didn't remember the opening, probably I didn't have to play 8...Be7 and then I also started to play bad moves and my position became worse and worse." Nepomniachtchi still had an hour left on his clock when Alekseenko resigned.

Fabiano Caruana has arrived at this event well prepared but today things went a little wrong. It's clear that while Ding Liren isn't quite back to his very best he's playing much better than he did in the first half, something he himself has referred to a couple of times - he seems very motivated to finish as well as possible. Today the players discussed an Ruy Lopez Anti-Marshall where Caruana gave up a pawn for dynamic chances and these in the end were good enough to hold the draw, Caruana never generated the winning chances he was seeking.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave chose the fairly topical 10.c5 vs Anish Giri's Sveshnikov Sicilian and pretty soon the players were on their own in a complicated middle game where Giri was clearly on the back foot. 31.Rc4 seems to have been a wrong step which allowed black to achieve equality although the computer thinks 35...Rg4?! 36.Qc2 is advantageous for white.

Alexander Grischuk had 1 hour 31 minutes left after move 10 but only 19 minutes after move 11 following a marathon 1 hour 12 minute think in his game against Wang Hao. Grischuk was struggling to find a line that was even satisfactory for him although he surely could have played 11...cxd4 much earlier than he did as it was the only move that gave him the prospect of play. Grischuk did indeed get decent play but he was obviously severely short of time and Wang Hao chose to give up his Queen for wild complications. The computer thinks Grischuk was winning after 24.Nxd4? but that was hardly the point and there was dynamic equality after 30...Bxd5 and a draw that was not much use to either player at move 41.

Round 10 Standings: 1st Nepomniachtchi 6.5pts 2nd Caruana 5.5pts 3rd MVL 5.5pts 4th Giri 5.5pts 5th Wang Hao 4.5pts 6th Grischuk 4.5pts 7th Ding Liren 4pts 8th Alekseenko 4pts

Rest Day Thursday 22nd April

Round 11 Friday 23rd April 2021 12:00 BST: Nepomniachtchi-Caruana, Alekseenko-Wang Hao, Grischuk-MVL, Giri-Ding Liren.