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After defeating Anish Giri of the Netherlands in the first round, Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa is yet to win a game in the Candidates chess tournament here and the road ahead for him looks difficult as Uzbek Javokhir Sindarov has a head start that everyone will be envious off. With four rounds out of ten done, Praggnanandhaa is sitting on two points and it is suffice to say that it`s a pretty decent start except when one looks at the results of Sindarov.
The Uzbek had stunned the chess audience world over by winning the World Chess Cup in Goa last year and he seems unstoppable having scored 3.5 points out of his four games. For any strong event like this, either the start or the business end is crucial. And with this kind of start, it is clear that Sindarov is the most feared opponent unless someone brings him down.
That said, the Uzbek brand of chess is also dependent on his ability to go for complexities where he tries to outplay opposition. And this could be one point on which the other elite players will bank on going further as anything can happen in positions which have three possible results. With Sindarov on 3.5, Caruana stands second on 2.5 while Praggnanandhaa, Matthias Bluebaum of Germany and Giri share the next three spots on 2 points each.
Hikaru Nakamura of the United States and Wei Yi of China come in next on 1.5 points while Andrey Esipenko of Russia is in last spot with just one point in his kitty. In the women`s tournament being held simultaneously, Bibisara Assaubayeva of Kazakhstan and Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine share the lead on 2.5 points. Russians Kateryna Lagno and Aleksandra Goryachkina along with Jiner Zhu of China and Indian R Vaishali share the third spot on 2 points each while Divya Deshmukh and Zhongyi Tan are not far behind on 1.5 points. In the open section, Sindarov has clearly been the pick of the players with his never-say-die attitude and his skills in the tactical patterns. His game against Praggnanandhaa probably stands out as his best effort in the event thus far wherein he sacrificed a piece early and got great counter play.
For Praggnanandhaa, things need to improve if he has to make a bid to play the next world championship match against D Gukesh. So far, the Indian has shown enough intent but it remains to be seen if he can bring home a few more points before the first half ends in this 8-player 14-round event in which everyone plays against the other twice. Praggnanandhaa will take on bottom-placed Esipenko in the next round after a rest day Thursday. The women`s event is quite open as the two leaders started off as underdogs. Anna Muzychuk especially got a chance to be here following the withdrawal of Koneru Humpy while Bibisara was at best a long shot when the event started.
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