Round 10 of the 2022 Candidates: The Battle for First May Be (Almost) Over, But the Race For Second Is a Mess

I remember reading Vik Vasiliev’s biography of Tigran Petrosian when I was a kid, and his account of the 1962 Candidates came to mind. With five rounds to go, he was tied with Paul Keres for first and was, I think, a point ahead of Efim Geller. In the remaining five rounds, he made five draws - the prearranged draws with Keres and Geller, then with Pal Benko and Bobby Fischer, and finally in the last round a 14-move non-effort - with White - against tournament tailender Miroslav Filip.

My recollection is that this unambitious strategy in the last rounds, particularly the last round, when a Keres win against Fischer would have forced a playoff, was defended by Petrosian. My recollection is that he believed his rivals would crack under the pressure, and in the end they did. For Geller, the cracking had already taken place, and he only closed the gap in the last round with a win over Benko, while poor Keres, who had gone 7-0 against Benko in their previous Candidates games (4-0 in 1959, and 3-0 in the first three cycles in 1962), lost to Benko in the penultimate round and then failed to cash in an advantage against Fischer in the final round. One shouldn’t be too quick to draw conclusions based on results: a bad strategy will sometimes pay off, and a good strategy might not. But his hypothesis seems to have been a reasonable one, especially given Keres’ sad track record of cracking at the end of Candidates’ tournaments.

So, why do I bring this up? It’s because Ian Nepomniachtchi seems to have adopted Petrosian strategy in the second cycle of the current Candidates tournament. After finishing the first cycle with a 5.5-1.5 score, he decided to play with absolutely minimal risk against Ding Liren, despite having the white pieces and a massive 2.5-point lead over his then-winless opponent, and even though his closest rival, Fabiano Caruana, was only half a point behind and would have White against him the very next day. And it worked out, as Nepo got an easy draw and lots of rest for the next round, while Caruana lost a six-hour game to Hikaru Nakamura. In the next round, Nepo was in trouble against Caruana, but the best way was not easily found, and Nepo escaped with a draw.

And that brings us to round 10. Despite having the white pieces against one of the tailenders and bottom seeds, Teimour Radjabov, he again played unambitiously and finished his day before the time control; in fact, were it not for the Sofia Rules, White could offered the draw on move 26.

This would seem a foolish decision, especially coming after a rest day. While Caruana, still a point behind Nepo, was due for Black in today’s round, his opponent was Jan-Krzysztof Duda: the bottom seed, in last place, and the only player left in the tournament who hadn’t won a game. Guess what? Yes, you guessed it: Duda won. And it’s not that Duda played great chess, either. At times he played well, but there were other stretches where he played poorly. But Caruana seemed punch drunk, playing terribly from late in the opening throughout the middlegame. It was by far his worst game of the tournament, and this second loss in three days leaves him a point and a half behind Nepomniachtchi with only four rounds to go. Worse still, he has company.

When Nakamura beat Caruana in round 8, he closed to within half a point of his fellow American, but then a loss to to Radjabov in round 9 left him a full point behind him once again. Today he recovered well, obliterating Alireza Firouzja, who took way too many chances in the opening and never recovered.

But wait, there’s more. Ding Liren won his second straight game, defeating Richard Rapport in a thrilling game with the black pieces. Rapport played fighting, imaginative chess, but Ding played just as well. In the end, Rapport made just one substantial mistake - and it wasn’t an obvious one - and wound up losing an opposite-colored bishop ending by a narrow margin.

As a result, Ding is part of a three-way tie for second with Caruana and Nakamura, and as I mentioned previously, this is significant because if Magnus Carlsen decides he doesn’t want to spend another three weeks looking at Nepomniachtchi in a world championship match, it seems that the upshot will be a match between Nepo (assuming he wins the tournament) and whoever comes in second.

About this tie for second, there’s a sad irony. In my preview post on the Candidates, I expressed my happiness about FIDE’s decision to hold a playoff in case of a tie for first, instead of settling it by tiebreaks like Sonneborn-Berger. A tie for first seems very unlikely at the moment, but if there’s a tie for second that tie will be determined by tiebreaks rather than a playoff. It’s irrelevant if Carlsen plays Nepo (or whomever), but all-important if he abdicates. Let’s hope that neither “if” comes to pass: that there will be no tie for second and that Carlsen will play against the winner of the Candidates.

Here are today’s games, with my annotations, and here are the pairings for round 11:

Nakamura (5.5) - Rapport (4)

Firouzja (4) - Nepomniachtchi (7)

Radjabov (4.5) - Duda (4)

Caruana (5.5) - Ding (5.5)