2026 FIDE Candidates Round 5
A few interesting moments:
Position stare time:
Question: It’s an extremely sharp position in the Marshall Gambit. White has sacrificed two pawns for an irrational position, the bishop pair, and attacking chances. What move would you play? We’ll see what Nakamura chose at the end of the article.
Caruana - Bluebaum
We got a rare mate on the board in Fabi’s round 5 game against Bluebuam.
In a position not very stereotypical of the Petrov Defense, Bluebaum allowed his opponent to crown his mating attack with a cheeky pawn mate: 27.Qe8+ Kg7 28.h6#
Zhu - Vaishali
This game would take a long time to explain, so I’d rather show than try to tell. Long story short, I really enjoy the way that Zhu Jiner simply suffocated the life out of Vaishali’s position — it’s one of those squeezes where one side is able to absolutely prevent counterplay by the other side, and then take their sweet time maneuvering applying torturous pressure until the other side finally falls. Note how White attacks the backward g6-pawn in the major piece endgame to sufficiently distract Black from the c-file, at which point positional dominance wins the game for her. Great play by Zhu.
Nakamura - Sindarov
Answer: Instead of Nakamura’s 13.h4?, 13.Ne4! was the only move, and for a rather complicated reason, which is probably why Nakamura spent nearly 70(!) minutes on this position. The game continuation was 13…Qa5+ 14.b4 Nxb4 15.O-O Re8 16.Qd2 c5 17.Rad1 Nf5
With the h-pawn hanging, White is virtually forced to open the position up for Black’s bishop and e8-rook with 18.Nxf5 exf5. While there are other considerations, what Hikaru chose here was more-or-less the correct line (16.Qd2 made things a bit worse, but not desperately so); so what happens if White plays Ne4 and play continues the same way instead of h4?
13…Qa5 14.b4 Nxb4 15.O-O Re8 16.Qd2 c5 17.Rad1 Nf5
Compared to the game position after h4, here the h-pawn is not hanging, and White can smoothly reply with Kh1 or Qg5 without helping Black activate their position more; things are dynamically balanced: White’s position is hyper-active to compensate for the three missing pawns. Of course, the game could have branched out many more times, but I think what Hikaru either did not see or under-estimated probably had to do with the impact of Nf5 and the threat of losing the h-pawn.
Alas, after 13.h4? Hikaru suffered as Sindarov’s position easily unfurled into a win in an opposite color bishop endgame, extending Sindarov’s absolutely epic Candidates run by another win, for an unprecedented 4.5/5 start.