Praggu holds Alireza in opener

The Fide Candidates and the Women’s Candidates chess tournament, in a historical first, started simultaneously in Toronto, Canada on Thursday. All the four encounters in this double-round-robin event in the Open section ended in deadlocks, though not of the shorter or swifter version as was the norm a few years back when players wanted to settle slowly and steadily into the long tournament. The only decisive result of the day came in the women’s section with former women’s World Champion Tan Zhongyi defeating compatriot Lei Tingjie.

A new chapter for Indian Chess also commenced as for the first time since inception, the Candidates boasted three Indians amongst the elite eight in the fray, a far cry from the times that 5 -time World Champion Viswanathan Anand stood solo. Dommanraju Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa and Vidit Gujrathi are the Indian GMs in the Open section and Koneru Humpy and R Vaishali feature in the Women’s section. In another record, Pragg and Vaishali are the first brother-sister duo to qualify for the same event.

In one of the surprising results on the day, Nijat Abasov of Azerbaijan, the lowest rated player in fray, held two-time World Championship Challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi.

As is the norm, players of the same country are pitted against each other in the early rounds and thus the D Gukesh-versus-Vidit Gujrathi battle started in the Queen’s Gambit Declined version.
Calm and cool play by both resulted in a few exchanges with an early draw signed on the 21st move with most of the pieces still gracing the board.

One of the most awaited tussles between youngsters touted as the’ future faces of chess’, Alireza Firouzja and Praggnanandhaa began with one of the oldest Openings in Chess, the tried and tested Ruy Lopez.
This game had its fair share of excitement with Alireza castling early and Praggu preferring to keep his King in the centre and delaying castling to launch an attack on the King-side.
Praggu looked ready to go for the kill with his Queen and rooks gunning fire on the King-side.
Alireza in turn created a counter attack in the centre of the board and set up his own checkmating nets. Pragg forced the draw with perpetual checks on the 39th turn with his queen.

The battle between top two contenders and rating favourites Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura arising out of the sharp Sicilian Defence was also evenly contested, the peace signed after 41 moves.

The Italian Opening game between Vaishali and Humpy was a rather solid and sedate affair with pieces being systematically exchanged at regular intervals.
Both players agreed to split the point after 41 moves when each was left with a bishop and knight along with identical number of pawns.  

Round 1 results: Hikaru Nakamura (2803) drew Fabiano Caruana (2789); Nijat Abasov (2632) drew Ian Nepomniachtchi (2758); Alireza Firouzja (2760) drew R Praggnanandhaa (2747); D Gukesh (2743) drew Vidit Santosh Gujrthi (2727).

Women’s section: Aleksandra Goryachkina (2553) drew Kaeryna Lagno (2542); Anna Muzychuk (2520) drew Nurgyul Salimova (2432); Tingjie Lei (2550) lost to Zhongyi Tan (2521); Vaishali Rameshbabu (2475) drew Koneru Humpy (2546).