Catherine the Great: The Russian is desperately preparing to enter the candidates tournament

For the round before the end of the "Big Swiss", only Ekaterina Lagno of the Russians retains a chance of getting into the 2026 candidates tournament. At the end of 10 rounds, the three-time world blitz champion is in first place, scoring 7.5 points. Vaishali Rameshbabu from India has the same amount. There are three chess players with seven points in the "pursuit group": Chinese women Tan Zhongyi, Yuxin Song, as well as representative of Kazakhstan Bibisara Asaubayeva. It is these five who will compete for two places in the candidate tournament. The situation is similar for men. Germans Matthias Blubaum, Vincent Kemer, Frenchman Alireza Firouja, American Hans Niemann and St. Petersburg native Anish Giri, who represents the Netherlands, will compete for the top 2. Yan Nepomnyashchy and Andrey Esipenko are one point behind the leaders and will no longer be able to join the fight.

A missed opportunity

In the tenth round, Ekaterina Lagno drew with the 16th world champion Tan Zhongyi in black. This is a good result for our compatriot: now a draw with white in the final game of the tournament with Ulvia Fatalieva will practically ensure Ekaterina the first or second place. Winning will make her the winner of the entire tournament. Vaishali, who also has to play with Tan, lags behind Lagno in additional indicators.

But Olga Girya lost her chances for the top 2, losing to Fatalieva on September 14. Nevertheless, a native of Langepas, who only last year resumed her career after maternity leave, has already shown excellent results. It is possible that Olga's performance will be noticed by the national team coaches and she will play at the upcoming World Team Championship in Linares.

The rest of our participants — Polina Shuvalova, Leia Garifullina and Anna Shukhman — failed to win in the 10th round and did not approach the group of leaders.

Vincent Kaymer had a great opportunity to beat Matthias Blubaum in the open tournament, but he did not see an obvious winning continuation.

"He should have won—I made a terrible move in a position where it's just impossible to make a mistake," Blubaum admitted. — But I still managed, and my position was technically lost. But the opponent made a retaliatory mistake and lost a pawn! I was incredibly lucky. I'm still shocked that I saved the party. For the last hour and a half, I was sure that I was going to lose, it was disgusting to me, because there was no point in playing further. Now I just appreciate my luck and I'm waiting for what will happen in the final round.

Bluebaum was the real opening of the tournament. The German, who had only the 32nd starting number, is still undefeated, and was also able to beat the first and second seeded Rameshbaba Pragnanandhu and Arjun Erigaisi.

The Fall of Gukesh

Of the leading group, only Hans Niemann managed to win in the penultimate round, who was able to beat Pragnanandha in a difficult endgame, depriving the talent from India of a chance to compete for the top 2. Hans himself retains this opportunity. However, a draw in the 11th round with his teammate Anish Giri may not suit the American. According to additional indicators, Bluebaum and Alireza Firouja are higher, who play with each other.

— If chess players score the same number of points, then the winner is determined by additional indicators, in this case the average rating of the opponents comes first, — Ilya Levitov, former vice-president of the Russian Chess Federation, explained in his Telegram channel. — When 11 rounds of classics are played and the candidates tournament is at stake, it is strange not to arrange a break in rapid chess, but to determine by some additional indicator. It looks as unfair as possible — the rivals have proved their worth in the fight for prizes in this tournament. The outage was in Wake, it was in St. Louis. Everywhere, in fact, except for the tournament, where the stakes are as high as possible in the chess world.

In the tenth round, Yan Nepomnyashchy drew with Nodirbek Yakubboev from Uzbekistan, and Andrei Esipenko beat Sanan Sugirov, who has represented Hungary since 2024. Both Russians are one point behind the leaders. Esipenko's defeat by Pranav Venkatesh in the fifth round ruined everything, and Yana's draw with Alexey Shirov in the sixth. After a game where he missed an obvious win, the strongest Russian chess player in recent years even thought about withdrawing from the tournament, but nevertheless decided to continue. Nepomnyashchy and Esipenko will face each other in the last round.

The 18th world champion Gukesh Dommaraju is also playing in Uzbekistan. However, it would be better if he didn't do that. After 10 rounds, the Indian is in 62nd place, having lost three games in a row in 5-7 rounds. In the eighth round, Gukesh with great difficulty drew with his compatriot Divya Deshmukh (along with Alexandra Goryachkina, they showed up at the open), and in the ninth he could not beat Robert Oganesyan. He has already lost more than 17 rating points and dropped out of the top 10.

Thanks to Gukesh's misfires, 16-year-olds Abhimanyu Mishra and Ediz Gurel, as well as grandmaster Nicholas Theodorou from Greece, joined Mikhail Chigorin's club, which includes chess players who beat the reigning world champion in the classics. We will soon find out how long the crisis of the 19-year-old champion will last and whether he will repeat the path of Ding Liren.