The second act of the 14-round Candidates tournament paced at a much slower speed today. If the first round started with a bang, the next one slowly gained momentum and built up tension towards the only decisive game of the round. Three draws and Hikaru Nakamura making a comeback with white pieces against Teimour Radjabov. Fabiano Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi remain the leaders after the second round of the FIDE Candidates tournament.
Results of Round 1
Results of round 2
Photo: FIDE/Stev Bonhage
Jan-Krzysztof Duda – Ding Liren ½-½
Chess in Poland has been booming lately thanks to the rising star of Jan-Krzysztof Duda, and he certainly feels the pressure to do well in his first Candidates. His nervousness clearly showed in yesterday’s game and things were shaky today too. Ding Liren got an easy position with the bishop pair out of the opening and clearly felt a chance to strike back after losing the first game. But pushing 23…g5?! proved pushing a bit too hard, weakening Black’s pawn structure and shifting the positional edge to the Pole.
Nevertheless, Jan-Krzysztof Duda couldn’t navigate the ensuing complicated middlegame position well. After the game, he was contemplating his opening choice: “I prepared an opening idea which did not give me any objective advantage but I hoped to get a playable position. But I was not feeling very comfortable and basically did not know what to do!”
Even if he could not find a way forward, the Polish grandmaster certainly knew how to not let things get out of hand. The game finished with a move repetition on move 41 (which was still a middlegame, with just a couple of pieces swapped off the board. He could’ve pushed his luck a bit more even in the final position, with engines slightly favouring White after the courageous g2-g4 pawn move.
Photo: FIDE/Stev Bonhage
Ian Nepomniachtchi – Fabiano Caruana ½-½
Keeping spectators at the edge of their seats from their first moves, the big match-up ultimately came to an anticlimactic end. Fabiano Caruana showed deep opening preparation in a sharp line of the Italian, starting with the gambling 10…Ng4 move. As mentioned by Caruana, his novelty relied on the surprise factor and he was immediately rewarded after Nepomniachtchi did not find the critical continuation. Pressure was building up on the board as well as on the clock — a clear sign things have gone wrong for the usually quick Nepomniachtchi.
The American had to invest a significant portion of his clocktime towards finding correct solutions as well, but he was spot on. His plan to muddy waters from the very start, dragging the opponent to a concrete fight on Caruana’s own playground was working. Finally, he was just one more well-made decision away from consolidating the madness into a more tangible advantage. The only mistake from his part in the whole game was a move that never happened — a cunning 32…Rxb2 exchange sacrifice. Instead, the game finished with yet another move repetition.
Photo: FIDE/Stev Bonhage, Richard Rapport making an entree to the playing hall
Richard Rapport – Alireza Firouzja ½-½
The creative Hungarian, leading White pieces, was very close to scoring a full point today. His opening choice, the pawn structure as well as the plan (initiated by 9.c5) were very similar to the game Duda-Rapport from round one, only with colors reversed.
And the game soon took a very similar course as well. Richard Rapport doubled his rooks on Firouzja’s 7th rank, getting to the verge of winning. Nevertheless, he was unable to snatch the victory, missing multiple winning shots around the first time control. A dynamically balanced rook endgame, with each side having a strong passer, was heading to a draw when Rapport got one more unexpected (and missed) chance after Firouzja blundered with 51…Re7??.
In the end, Firouzja held another theoretically drawn endgame to a draw and saved half a point as a birthday present to himself while Rapport’s luck evened out — being clearly lost in one game and clearly winning in the second one, he made two draws instead.
Photo: FIDE/Stev Bonhage
Hikaru Nakamura – Teimour Radjabov 1-0
Hikaru Nakamura managed to bounce back after a painful first round defeat. Recharging with his followers by streaming on his Twitch channel in the evening after yesterday’s game worked wonders.
The marathon against Radjabov was a one-sided matter, playing for only two results, from start to finish. Good opening preparation, following an online game between Nepomniachtchi and Aronian from 2020, led to the Azeri going astray and losing a pawn. Nakamura did not choose the most precise path to convert his advantage, trading material back for piece activity, always keeping the upper hand.
Replay the broadcast from round two on our YouTube.
Black stumbled again before the first time control (there is another time control on move 60, and no increment per move until then!), losing a pawn again. And this time the material was not returned and the pressure was mounting. Eventually, Nakamura decided the game in a dramatic pawn race. Radjabov’s two isolated passers were no match for White’s connected trio, and exhausted Radjabov threw the towel in on move 75.
We’re heading towards the first rest day on Monday, but before that, join grandmaster commentators Alejandro Ramirez, Yasser Seirawan and Christian Chirila for the move-by-move from round 3 on Sunday, June 19. The commentary starts at 7:50 AM CDT, catch all the action live on uschesschamps.com or our YouTube and Twitch channels.