By CEO National Master Evan Rabin
After 11 rounds of the FIDE Candidates 2024, two-time World Championship Ian Nepomniachtchi is leading the Open Section with a 7/11 score and Former Women’s World Champion Grandmaster Zhongyi Tan is leading the Women’s Section with a 7.5/11 score. With three games remaining in the tournament Dommaraju Gukesh (6.5/11), Hikaru Nakumura (6.5/11) and Fabiano Caruana (6/11) still have decent chances to catch up in the Open Section. Only one player has decent chances to catch up to Zhongyi Tan in the Women’s Section and that is Grandmaster Tingjei Li (7/11). With three rounds left, we will soon know who the challenger will be to World Champion Ding Liren later this year.
Meanwhile, let’s discuss three interesting insights: how little PR the
Candidates has received outside the chess world, the little faith many commentators have had for Nepomniachtchi to win the Candidates for the third time, and how the players and fans have known Abasov as a severe underdog.
Everyone likes drama. Other than some articles, like this Wall Street Journal one about the shoe Firouza shoe scandal, where the chief arbiter told him to wear different shoes to avoid noise, the tournament has had little coverage in mainstream media. It has not been exciting with any cheating scandals. I have asked a lot of non-chess players if they knew the Candidates were going on and they had no idea.
Before the tournament ‘Chess by the Numbers‘ predicted Nepomniachtchi’s chances of winning the tournament as 10%, as compared to 11% for Firouza, 25% for Nakamura and 36% for Caruana. Many people have doubted that Nepomniachtchi would win the tournament for the third consecutive time, an achievement no players has ever done. Only four other players have won two consecutive candidates in a row– Symslov, Spassky, Korchnoi and Karpov.
With a 1/2 point lead, upcoming whites against Praggnanandhaa and Nakamura and one black against Caruana, who is a full point behind, he has great chances to win the tournament. Nepomniachtchi is proving that artificial barriers can be overcome. As long he maintains his cool for the remmaining three games, he will mostly likely get a rematch against Ding Liren this fall.
It is true that Abasov is an underdog in the tournament; he is rated 2632 FIDE, 95 points lower rated than the 7th seat Vidit Gujrathi. The players have viewed Abasov as ‘punching bag”. For instance, after Nakamura lost to Gujrathi in round 9, he said in a post-game interview that he would have good chance to catch up in standings as he was playing white against Abasov. As I wrote in a previous blog post “Nobody is that Solid” , players often view higher rated players as unbeatable. Abasov is better than 99.9+% of players in the world. The fact that Abasov so far drew 6 games and lost 5 does go to show how significant 95 points are at the elite level. To any non-grandmaster, 3/11 against this field would be an incredible result.
Will Nepomniachtchi defy all odds and win his third consecutive candidates or will either Gukesh, Nakamura or Caruana catch up? Take your predicition now and we will soon figure out who is correct. While I predicted, Caruana would win the tournaemnt before it started, I am pretty sure Nepomniachtchi will pull off a hat trick. Hopefully the tournament will get some more exposure in mainstream media and who knows- maybe Abasov will win a game before the tournament ends.
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