GM Anish Giri played a positional masterpiece to take down GM Fabiano Caruana and grab sole second place in the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament after round nine. GM Javokhir Sindarov could have scored a record sixth win, but slipped up against GM Matthias Bluebaum and saw his lead cut to 1.5 points. Elsewhere GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu spoiled a winning position against GM Wei Yi, while GM Andrey Esipenko survived a long grind by GM Hikaru Nakamura.
GMs Zhu Jiner and Vaishali Rameshbabu lead the 2026 FIDE Women’s Candidates with 5.5 points after nine rounds. Vaishali defeated her countrywoman GM Divya Deshmukh, and Zhu beat GM Kateryna Lagno in her second consecutive win. GM Anna Muzychuk had a good chance to inflict a third consecutive loss for GM Tan Zhongyi, but that game ended in a draw, as did GM Aleksandra Goryachkina vs. GM Bibisara Assaubayeva.
Round 10 is on Thursday, April 9, starting at 8:45 a.m. ET / 14:45 CEST / 6:15 p.m. IST.
FIDE Candidates: Giri Takes Over In 2nd Place
Giri’s second win in a row, which was also Caruana’s second loss in a row, was a huge result for the tournament standings.
Candidates Round 9 Results
Giri now looks like the one player who can stop Sindarov, with a 1.5-point gap and a head-to-head clash with the leader to come.
Candidates Standings After Round 9
One game looked absolutely crucial in round nine, and so it proved.
Caruana 0-1 Giri
Giri called himself a “mini-Sindarov” after winning a second game in a row to take over in sole second place. The game was also a second loss in a row for Caruana, whose hopes of reaching a second world championship match now look in tatters.
Gave Fabi 30-40% chance to win before the event but watching the live feed looks like he’s totally given up at this point. Losing to Sindarov totally changed the narrative of his tournament.
— Wesley So (@WesleySo_) April 8, 2026
Caruana had the white pieces but got a miserable position out of the opening, with Giri commenting, “He has to play for a win today, and it’s depressing.” There was still hope of holding a draw, however, with the critical moment coming when 37…c5?! appeared on the board. Â
Caruana was down to a little over three minutes for three moves and failed to spot the very concrete reasons why taking en passant with 38.dxc6! would likely have saved the game. Giri felt the move should have been made by process of elimination, however, since after 38.Kg3? “even if he gets everything he wants it’s such torture here!”Â
Instead of Caruana attempting to set up a fortress and Giri slowly dismantling it we got a brutal and brilliant finish. In just a few moves, the Dutch number-one was able to weave a checkmating net.Â
Anish Giri defeats Fabiano Caruana with a beautiful finish to move into sole 2nd place, 1.5 points behind Sindarov with 5 rounds to go! https://t.co/0BhKAetqro#FIDECandidates pic.twitter.com/emPhkNHnyX
— chess24 (@chess24com) April 8, 2026
That’s our Game of the Day, which GM Rafael Leitao has analyzed below.
Just as in the 2020-1 FIDE Candidates, GIri is the man putting pressure on the leader early in the second half of the event, but when he was asked about a two-horse race he responded: “I think it’s a one-horse race and there’s a bunch of losers in the back, and OK, I’m slightly ahead of the losers now, but let’s win a few more games and then speak of a two-horse race!”
I think it’s a one-horse race and there’s a bunch of losers in the back, and OK, I’m slightly ahead of the losers now.
—Anish GiriÂ
Giri’s win became even more important when Sindarov missed a chance to get even closer to the finishing line.
Bluebaum ½-½ Sindarov
Going into this game, Sindarov would have been satisfied with a draw with the black pieces, especially as he’ll have White in three of his remaining five games, but the way it went it became a disappointment he needs to forget in a hurry.
“I need to forget this round and focus on my next games!” says Sindarov after allowing an endgame instead of keeping queens on the board with a winning position. “I became very sad!” #FIDECandidates pic.twitter.com/907dp2YfL2
— chess24 (@chess24com) April 8, 2026
Once again the opening went according to Sindarov’s preparation, with a rare line of the Queen’s Gambit Accepted catching Bluebaum totally off-guard. The German number-two confessed:
I felt like I played like a complete clown until some moment. After 22…a4, I just hated my life, I just wanted to resign. I feel like I was practically lost in every single way, but OK, he let me escape to this endgame, which of course I should hold for the draw.Â
I felt like I played like a complete clown until some moment!
—Matthias Bluebaum
At the crucial moment, however, Sindarov, who had a 25-minute lead on the clock, spent just 11 seconds to head for an endgame instead of retreating his queen with a great position. The leader admitted the tournament situation was a factor in choosing a risk-free endgame, but he said the move 29.f5 “killed me,” though it turns out that wasn’t even the only way to hold the position.
So Sindarov saw his lead cut to 1.5 points, but he remains the strong favorite to win with only five rounds to go.
One man who knows exactly how that feels is GM Ian Nepomniachtchi, who especially in Madrid 2022 did almost exactly the same thing as Sindarov has done in Cyprus. Nepomniachtchi unexpectedly turned up in the venue for round nine, telling FM Mike Klein he’s there as “a tourist,” and adding, “I saw there’s free time in my schedule so I can come and witness history, but probably I’m late and everything happened in the first part!”
Nepomniachtchi described what happened in the Sindarov game as “quite shocking,” but felt Sindarov would soon get over it: “This is the privilege of youth, that he’s not being too worried for too long!”
The remaining games were drawn, which helped none of the four players who are all an almost mathematically unbridgeable three or more points behind the leader, but they were still incredibly intense.
Praggnanandhaa pounced on a mistake by Wei and found a string of only moves to gain a winning advantage, but one slip and the Chinese star hit back to find a series of only moves of his own to hold a draw. Even then, Praggnanandhaa found a beautiful try in the closing stages.
45.f5!! might not win the game for Praggnanandhaa, but David & Judit love the move! https://t.co/ywbvDrkoHv#FIDECandidates pic.twitter.com/hKaitWFuDJ
— chess24 (@chess24com) April 8, 2026
The last game to finish was a marathon, with Nakamura adopting the plan that worked against Caruana of massaging a small edge. He gained an extra pawn, but in six hours and 92 moves, Esipenko found all the correct moves and and held a deserved draw.Â
Check out Nakamura’s own commentary on the game below:
Nakamura will struggle to make up three points in five rounds, but he can definitely play spoiler as he faces Giri in Thursday’s round 10, while Sindarov is White against Praggnanandhaa.
FIDE Candidates: Round 10 PairingsÂ
FIDE Women’s Candidates:Â Zhu, Vaishali Race Ahead
Vaishali and Zhu won the two decisive games in the round.
Women’s Candidates Round 9 Results
There were five leaders going into the round, but just two players broke away from the pack.
Women’s Candidates Standings After Round 9
Goryachkina vs. Assaubayeva was the first game to end, and it also had the least action. In a Rossolimo Sicilian, the Kazakh GM temporarily sacrificed a pawn, won it back, and eventually went for a threefold repetition.
The other draw, between Tan and Muzychuk, was certainly a missed opportunity—a second one for Muzychuk, who achieved a winning position in the previous round but even lost that game. By move 30 in a Grunfeld Defense, she surrounded and won an isolated pawn on d5, but White managed to escape in the opposite-color bishop endgame.
A win would have kept Muzychuk in the lead, even after yesterday’s blunder, but she’s still only a half-point behind. Tan, now 2.5 points behind the leaders, is the only player we can say is truly out of the running to qualify for the world championship match.
Vaishali 1-0 Divya
Divya played ambitiously with the black pieces and, facing a double fianchetto system, she went for an early 9…Ne4 and set up a Stonewall pawn structure. Vaishali played the interesting 12.f4!? in response, to keep her knight on e5, and it worked out well. Within a few moves, Divya landed in a passive position—and things went from bad to worse when she blundered a pawn.
Divya’s tactical idea had a flaw: after her planned 18.Nxc6 Nb6 19.d5 Nxc4 20.Rc4 Bxc4 she said she missed the last move 21.Qd4, with a fork against the bishop and checkmate on g7 (you can play through the variation on the board lower down).
From there, Vaishali’s technique was ruthless, and GM Judit Polgar pointed out that White made three rook sacrifices on the way to victory.
In the 2024 Women’s Candidates, Vaishali showed that she’s capable of unthinkable streaks. Though she lost four games in a row, she finished the tournament with a five-game winning streak, a run that ended only because she ran out of rounds. She’s now won three out of her last four games, but she said she’s not thinking about any streaks at the moment.
She said at the press conference: “My games were quite shaky, but I’m satisfied with the last two games. I hope to continue my game quality like this.”
GM Maurice Ashley also asked whether it’s difficult to beat a national teammate. “Not really!” Vaishali said: “This is an individual tournament. As you have said, we have played team tournaments together, but here I think we’re just focusing on our own games.”
Zhu 1-0 Lagno
The other co-leader scored a big win against Lagno, who had just won an easy game the round before—curiously, with another kind of Reti System. Like Vaishali, Zhu isn’t thinking so much about the big picture, but just taking the tournament one game at a time. She told FIDE, “I think it’s better just to try my best to play every game.”
With 14.Bxf6, she managed to double Black’s pawns on the kingside, but that alone shouldn’t have been a disaster. The critical mistake came six moves later, when Lagno traded into what became a bad bishop vs. good knight endgame. Zhu converted excellently, especially as she found the immediate knockout starting with 34.Nd6, giving her opponent zero hope.
After missing two chances, Muzychuk will have the white pieces against one of the tournament leaders, Vaishali, in round 10. Zhu will also have Black, against Assaubayeva.
FIDE Women’s Candidates: Round 10 PairingsÂ
NM Anthony Levin contributed to this report.
The FIDE Candidates Tournament is the most important FIDE tournament of the year. In the Open and Women’s events, eight players play each other twice for the right to challenge the FIDE World Champions Gukesh Dommaraju and Ju Wenjun to a match for the title.
Previous coverage: