The match with Jan-Krzysztof Duda was an excellent opportunity for Jan Nepomniachtchi to take one more step towards the second meeting with Magnus Carlsen for the chess crown.
If, after the first three rounds of the Candidates Tournament, the Russian shared the lead with Fabiano Caruana, then he threw him off his shoulders and single-handedly settled in first place in the table.
In this regard, the victory over the youngest participant in the tournament, 19-year-old Alireza Firouzja, in the fourth round turned out to be extremely important.
The homegrown grandmaster taught the young opponent a real lesson in skill and with white correctly punished him for an unsuccessful decision on the 20th move.
After that, the French lost the opportunity to counterattack and was forced to surrender.
At the same time, Caruana gave his competitor a great gift, breaking up with one of the main disappointments of the competition, Ding Liren, who at the last moment got the opportunity to perform in Madrid after Sergey Karjakin was suspended.
Finally, in the fifth round, Nepomniachtchi himself played one of the worst games in the tournament, failing to put the squeeze on Hikaru Nakamura.
The Russian acted in a blitz mode, but allowed an unforgivably large number of blots.
As a result, the opponent was close to having the upper hand, but Jan achieved a strategically necessary draw for himself.
In addition, Caruana again showed a similar result.
This time he almost lost with White to Richard Rapport and failed to take advantage of the “handout” from the leader.
On Thursday, June 23, the American met with Firouzja, and the Russian with the young Pole Duda.
He was behind him by one point and had to play to win in order to maintain working chances for final success.
And the last time he managed to beat Nepomniachtchi in a classical chess game back in 2019 as part of the Grand Prix in Hamburg.
However, in Madrid, he had practically no chance to repeat this success.
The favorite held an exemplary confrontation and won the class, which allowed him to maintain leadership.
As the first move, the Russian chose not to advance one of the pawns, but put the knight on f3.
Duda tried to respond by saturating the center of the board, while Nepomniachtchi created an advantage on the right flank.
Soon he began to boldly move forward and pawns.
The Pole was frankly lost under such pressure.
The considerable experience of the domestic grandmaster also had an effect, because the opponent, unlike him, made it to the Candidates Tournament for the first time in his career.
The exchange of all four knights further complicated his life, after which the Russian received space for attacks.
Nepomniachtchi moved his pieces forward and step by step increased his advantage, and soon he practically ousted his opponent from the center of the board.
The only inaccuracy from Jan was the transfer of the pawn to e6 on the 24th move, when it was more promising to send the rook to c3.
However, soon the native of Bryansk made the first check in the match with another pawn.
To Duda's credit, he did not give up until the very end and, in an almost hopeless situation, tried to break the game.
In particular, already in the end he was marked by his only check.
The opponent calmly led the king away from the threat of the queen.
However, it was, in fact, agony.
On the 31st move, the favorite launched a mating attack, and 25 minutes later the opponent resigned, realizing the pointlessness of further resistance.
Nepomniachtchi had an excellent meeting and achieved a third victory in the Candidates Tournament with the same number of draws and zero defeats, at the same time practically depriving one of his pursuers of the chances of success.
The sixth competitive day could have turned out to be absolutely wonderful for Jan if Caruana had made another misfire.
But Fabiano rallied at a difficult moment and confidently broke the resistance of Firuji.
Thus, the American continues to lag behind the Russian by 0.5 points.
But Nakamura and Rapport, content with draws, are now inferior to the leader by 1.5 points.
It is the rather dangerous and unpredictable Hungarian, who has already ruffled Caruana's nerves, that the leader will face in the seventh round, while Fabiano will examine Teimuraz Radjabov, who does not shine in Madrid.
According to experts, Nepomniachtchi has everything to take first place in the Candidates Tournament for the second time in a row and fight for the chess crown again, but you should not relax.
So, grandmaster Sergey Smagin emphasized that Jan made an excellent bid for the victory.
“Having gone through the humiliation that Carlsen gave him in the World Championship match, he managed to compensate for it with both an excellent game and a result.
Like, guys, say what you want, but here is the final table.
It seems to me that everything is going well for him in this regard, ”Gazeta.ru quoted Smagin as saying.
On the contrary, he reproached Caruana for cowardice and unwillingness to take risks, which had a negative impact on the American's game.
“If earlier Fabiano seemed to me one of the favorites, now he has lost the main thing that distinguished him from his rivals - determination.
A very revealing moment happened just in the game against Jan, when, having an objective advantage, he simply blew it.
I decided that a draw was also a good result, I was afraid to concede.
He didn’t have this “suddenly” before, he was considered fearless, ”added Smagin.
In turn, grandmaster Alexander Grischuk called the draw in the match with Nakamura, in which the Russian did not succeed, extremely important for his compatriot.
The expert rated it even higher than the victory over Liren and Firuja.
“Nepomniachtchi's problem is that about once every five games he fights at a non-grandmaster level.
And the fact that he managed to skip this meeting, which was not played in the best way, is insanely important.
What caused such a decline?
You know, this happens to Jan throughout his career and it is pointless to try to find some reason, ”R-Sport quotes Grischuk.