2026 FIDE Candidates Round 14
Esipenko - Caruana
Fabi steamrolled his opponent Andrey Esipenko in the final round with an extremely smooth Najdorf, complete with a rook sacrifice on c3.
Ain’t it buttery smooth?
Bluebaum - Giri
Much like Fabi, Giri got a nice win with the black pieces, thanks to Bluebaum castling into a very dangerous attack on the queenside. To me this choice was inexplicable, but Giri’s handling of the position was very nice.
Vaishali - Lagno
We got to see a Sicilian Dragon as Lagno tried to play with a win for Black. If Lagno were to win, she could potentially spoil Vaishali’s chances to win, and possibly be part of a five-way draw for first to force tiebreaks. Something happened which I think many players on either side of a Dragon have experienced before.
White has just played Bc4. The bishop is obviously verboten due to dxc4?? Qxd8! Rxd8 Rxd8+ and Black down the exchange with back rank problems. On move 11, Kateryna spent about 30 minutes thinking of what to do, because White is threatening to chop on d5 and win a pawn. I think there is really only one option to prevent this: 11…e6; the other idea would be to go very active with Rb8, sacrificing a pawn in the process. The problem with e6 is psychological — Black would usually want their bishop to have access to e6 and not block it in with this pawn; it takes more time to get this bishop via the move a5 and Ba6, or Black could play Bb7, which would give it a strange impression. In any case, neither of these options were to Lagno’s liking, and she finally chose her next move:
11...Be6?!
Losing a pawn in the process, with no real compensation for it. Vaishali went on to win and run away with victory, making her the sole leader in the tournament; which means Vaishali is the next challenger for the women’s world champion title and will face five-time champion Ju Wenjun later this year.
Divya - Assaubayeva
Bibisara was the Vaishali’s co-leader, but she got lucky and escaped from an impending loss against Divya.
25…Nxf2??
A faulty combination, based on the threat of Rxd1 followed by a threat on the queen. Divya found the critical intermezzo:
26.Rd7!
The rook moves to a protected square and threatens Black’s queen and the b7-bishop at the same time.
26…Qf6 27.Rxb7?
Low in time, Divya misses the critical continuation, and it’s just back to equality. Instead, 27.Nd6! was necessary — but it’s hard to find this in the middle of a game that isn’t close to ending. 27…Bxg2 28.Ndf7! Kg8 (28…Rxf7 29.Rxf7 Qxe5 30.Rf8+! Bxf8 31.Qxe5+) 29.Nh6+ Kh8 30.Nef7+ Rxf7+ 31.Nxf7+ Kg8 32.Kxg2; the dust is settling and White is up a piece and completely winning. There are other winning continuations but this is the most straightforward one to me.
Back to the game; after 27.Rxb7??
Bibisara is now able to survive, thanks to a perpetual that saves a half point from a desperate position: 27…Qxe5 28.Qxe5 Bxe5 29.Nc7 Ng4 30.Nxe6 Rf6 31.Ng5
White’s king is subjected to a torrent of checks to end the game by threefold repetition:
31…Bd4+ 32.Kh1 Nf2+ 33.Kh2 Ng4+ 34.Kh1 Nf2+ 35.Kh2 Ng4 36.Kh1 Nf2+ 1/2-1/2
That’s it — the end of the tournaments.
Sindarov won with 10 and never lost a game. It was a disappointing few weeks for the Fabi fans, myself included; but I’ve really enjoyed looking at all the games and am sure that the upcoming World Championship match against Gukesh will be amazing to watch.
Vaishali won with 8.5, barely edging out Bibisara by just a half-point. Vaishali felt like a bit of an underdog with a slow start to the tournament as well as being the tournament’s lowest rated player, but her grit and tactical prowess was extremely impressive, and her errors were compensated for with play that transcended that of her opponents; all-in-all a worthy challenger to Ju Wenjun’s throne.
If you made it through all 14 posts (or even if you read just this one), thank you for reading. And I’ll see you guys at the World and Women’s World Championships. (metaphorically, of course).