GMs Hikaru Nakamura and Anish Giri took revenge for first-half losses to shake up the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament standings. Nakamura’s first win of the event came against GM Fabiano Caruana, who was caught in second place after Giri outplayed GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu. Arguably the biggest winner of the day was GM Javokhir Sindarov, who shrugged off some leaked prep to make a draw vs. GM Andrey Esipenko that gave him a two-point lead with six rounds to go.
GM Divya Deshmukh was largely responsible for a massive shakeup in the 2026 FIDE Women’s Candidates standings. She came back from a losing position to take down the tournament leader, GM Anna Muzychuk, and allow three others to join a five-way group of players on 4.5 points that includes GM Zhu Jiner (who beat GM Tan Zhongyi), GM Kateryna Lagno (who beat GM Aleksandra Goryachkina), and GM Vaishali Rameshbabu (who made the only draw, against GM Bibisara Assaubayeva).
Round nine is on Wednesday, April 8, starting at 8:45 a.m. ET / 14:45 CEST / 6:15 p.m. IST.
FIDE Candidates: Sindarov Extends Lead As Nakamura Beats Caruana
Two big wins transformed the Candidates race as the second half of the event began.Â
Candidates Round 8 Results
That saw Sindarov’s lead grow to a full two points, while Giri has caught Caruana in second place.
Candidates Standings After Round 8
Going into round eight the drama involved leader Sindarov, but he navigated the day with an absolute minimum of drama!
Esipenko ½-½ Sindarov
In the run-up to this game it was revealed that Sindarov had left preparation accessible to all on his Lichess account, including the move that Nakamura had failed to find after a 67-minute think in round five. That was, as Sindarov told us at the time, prepared for the World Cup, and after round eight the young Uzbek star explained it was “no big deal.” He told FM Mike Klein:
In general it’s not a big deal because I don’t remember the last time when I opened the studies, but during the World Cup my fans were writing to me, ‘hey, man, your studies are not private, please do it private and don’t show your prep.’ In general, everyone needs to be very careful of this!Â
Sindarov says “it’s not a big deal” that some of his prep leaked, saying he can’t remember the last time he’d checked what was online! #FIDECandidates pic.twitter.com/6KFoMyEy4s
— chess24 (@chess24com) April 7, 2026
GM Ding Liren infamously leaked information in a similar manner through training games for his 2023 world championship match against GM Ian Nepomniachtchi and still won, while some of Caruana’s secrets were revealed in a video the Saint Louis Chess Club posted during the 2018 match against GM Magnus Carlsen. There again, Caruana held the balance in the classical games and only finally fell in rapid chess.
Sindarov knows draws in the second half of the event will almost certainly give him the coveted spot as a challenger for GM Gukesh Dommaraju, and he started off perfectly with a quick 24-move draw by repetition against Esipenko.
Sindarov noted he got to play his prep, though he did take some time to go for a pawn sacrifice instead of playing an uncomfortable position. Against a more ambitious player the compensation might have needed to be proven, but Esipenko, trailing by four points in last place, seemed in no mood to fight.
As it would happen, that draw was vital as it increased Sindarov’s lead to two points.
Nakamura 1-0 Caruana Â
Just as in Toronto in 2024, Caruana’s Candidates chances suffered a huge blow as the second half began, and once again at the hands of Nakamura, who told Klein: “For the tournament standings it’s not great for the fans, certainly, because now it looks very much like the tournament’s over, barring something crazy happening, but I’m just focused on my own game.”
It looks very much like the tournament’s over, barring something crazy happening!
—Hikaru Nakamura
“This is the first game where I got a decent position out of the opening and I was more prepared than my opponent,” explained Nakamura, and it was a familiar story in their recent history of Caruana getting ground down in what had seemed a relatively innocuous position. Time was a big factor, with the reigning U.S. champion down to a minute per move when he played the losing 28…h5?.
That’s our Game of the Day, which GM Rafael Leitao has analyzed below.
Check out Nakamura’s own recap of the game:
It was a bitter blow for Caruana, who dropped to a +1 score, though he’s been here before: in 2024 after the loss to Nakamura he won three of the remaining games and would have reached a playoff against Gukesh if he’d won a won position in the final round against Nepomniachtchi.
There’s a long way to go for that, but the most immediate impact of the loss was that Giri was able to join him in second place.
Giri 1-0 Praggnanandhaa
This was also revenge since Praggnanandhaa had started the Candidates in Cyprus with a brilliant win over Giri, with the Dutchman remarking: “If you see how I lose with Black you think that I’m a really, really bad player, much worse than Pragg, and if it’s the other way around, suddenly I’m very good again!”
The opening went perfectly for Giri, who seemed to underestimate his own 10.a4! move, which had never been played before. Praggnanandhaa didn’t react in the best fashion, but held on, and was close to salvation as the time control approached. The saving trick was difficult to spot low on time, however, with Giri calling it “such a high-class exercise!” After the move in the game, Giri beautifully put his opponent to the sword!Â
Giri gets revenge for his loss to Praggnanandhaa in the 1st half of the tournament and moves up to 2nd place with 6 rounds to go! https://t.co/Q0pboZabIE#FIDECandidates pic.twitter.com/tdtlrG0vwY
— chess24 (@chess24com) April 7, 2026
One way for the two-point gap to the leader to be cut is for both Caruana and Giri to win their head-to-head clashes with Sindarov, and if Giri wasn’t exactly considering that likely, he also explained: “You’re supposed to keep fighting here as long as you have a mathematical chance, because, you know, when I was born I had zero chance of becoming world champion and now it’s much, much higher than that!”
When I was born I had zero chance of becoming world champion and now it’s much, much higher than that!
—Anish GiriÂ
GM Wei Yi, a full point back, has chances much closer to zero, which explains why he fought so hard for a second win in a row.
Wei ½-½ Bluebaum
GM Matthias Bluebaum’s rock-solid tournament continued, however, as he made a seventh draw, defending stoutly against Wei’s spectacular rook sacrifice.Â
There are now only six rounds remaining, and one clash in Wednesday’s round nine will be huge. Caruana and Giri face off, with a win potentially making the winner a real contender, while a loss may prove fatal. Sindarov, meanwhile, has Black again, this time against Bluebaum. Â
FIDE Candidates: Round 9 PairingsÂ
FIDE Women’s Candidates: Leader’s Meltdown Leaves 5 Players In Lead
Nearly every game was decisive, but GM David Howell pinpointed Divya’s win as “the most unbelievable result” of the day.
Women’s Candidates Round 8 Results
Unlike the open tournament, almost everyone is still in contention.
Women’s Candidates Standings After Round 8
With players fired up after a rest day, we hardly saw a quiet game. That is, with the exception of Assaubayeva vs. Vaishali, where White got no advantage in an Italian Game and decided to bail out on move 16. Black reached a pawn-up rook endgame but never really threatened to win the first game to end.
From there, though, we saw three decisive games. The first was the most egregious opening disaster of the day.
Lagno 1-0 Goryachkina
The game between Russian compatriots was essentially decided on move 15. Lagno told FIDE after the game, “She probably didn’t know the line and 15…f5 is a bad move, I have a big advantage,” and explained further the psychological reason Goryachkina made such a grave, early mistake. “Because I was blitzing out all the moves, maybe she was scared to go into my preparation, that’s why she wanted to play something new, but of course when already you play 13…Qc5 you should take e5-pawn with the rook probably.”
Because I was blitzing out all the moves, maybe she was scared to go into my preparation.
—Kateryna Lagno
From there, all three of Black’s minor pieces were shut out of play by white pawns. Lagno may not have found the computer’s fastest way to a win, but she never once let go of the decisive advantage.
Tan 0-1 Zhu
The nightmare continued for the former women’s world champion as she sunk to a second consecutive loss, and her third loss in the tournament. Tan finds herself in last place and two points behind the leaders, while Zhu has as good a chance as any to win the tournament. Of course, it was another tough duel for compatriots.
The 23-year-old’s bravery was rewarded, as she played what might have been an over-the-board opening novelty. 10…a5N isn’t engine-approved, and for seven moves White demonstrated an advantage. The turnaround came after a wrong capture on move 17; taking on d4 with the rook could have led to a pleasant advantage, while taking with the pawn led to suffering.
Though Zhu could have kept a greater advantage with queens on the board, trading queens into a pawn-up endgame was enough for her to score a third win.
That brings us to the most shocking outcome, where Muzychuk went from better, to winning, to drawing—and, finally, to losing.
Muzychuk 0-1 Divya
There may be no luck in chess, but players sometimes suggest that there is karma. Alluding to her 135-move draw in the previous round, Divya said in the press conference, “I was winning the whole game, so probably it got balanced out today. I was not doing good today, but then I ended up winning.”
I was not doing good today, but then I ended up winning.
—Divya Deshmukh
For a long time, the only two conceivable results were either that White wins or draws—and it was hard to imagine even that White wouldn’t win. The tournament leader, Muzychuk, got an extremely easy-to-play Maroczy position that turned into a one-sided, no-counterplay, heavy-piece endgame where only she could squeeze.
Allowing the trade on move 43 into a pure queen endgame was a mistake that led to equality, but even then White shouldn’t have lost. Nearly 20 moves later, defending a pawn-down queen endgame where she could have acquiesced to a perpetual check, Muzychuk collapsed. Divya said, “I think both of us were pretty tired by this time, so it’s understandable.”
It’s hard to point to any one game as the marquee matchup, considering that most of the field is in shared first. The only battle between compatriots will be the all-Indian clash between Vaishali and Divya, and both of them are in that group.
FIDE Women’s Candidates: Round 9 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.
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