Grandmaster Jan-Krzysztof Duda won in white against runner-up American Fabiano Caruana in the tenth round of the candidate chess tournament in Madrid. This is the Pole’s first victory in the championship that will determine the rival of Norwegian Magnus Carlsen in next year’s world championship match.
The game of 24-year-old Jan-Krzysztof Duda, making his debut in the Candidates Tournament and ranked 16th in the FIDE rankings, against five years older, the world’s fourth-best chess player from the USA, ended after 57 moves.
Both of them had previously fought six duels in classical chess, two of which Caruana won and four ended in draws, including the last one – in the third round in Madrid. The Pole, therefore, has a favourable score in the Spanish capital.
In Wednesday’s other games, playing under the FIDE flag, Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi tied in white with Azerbaijan’s Taymur Radzabov, American Hikaru Nakamura defeated French representative Alireza Firouzja, and Chinese Ding Liren won against Hungarian Richard Rapport. Because of such decisions, the leader, four rounds before the end of the competition, increased to 1.5 points the lead over the most dangerous rivals. Caruana, Nakamura and Liren got 5.5 points each.
Duda (one win, six draws, three defeats) is in sixth place in the standings, ahead of Rapport and Firouzia – 4 points each. On Thursday, in the 11th round, the Pole will face black against Rajabov, fifth in the standings, who has half a point more.
The last, 14th round of the event in Madrid will take place on July 4. The following day, overtime is scheduled if necessary. The last day of the break is scheduled for Saturday. The prize pool amounts to 500,000 dollars. The winners of the first three places will be enriched by: 48, 36 and 24 thousand dollars. For each half-point won, the competitors will also receive 3.5 thousand dollars.