Top seed Fabiano Caruana’s ambitious plan to surprise Ding Liren backfired in the third round of the Candidates Chess Tournament. The American lost, as his second-seeded Chinese rival finally was able to post a point.
Ding had lost both his previous games and looked worried when Caruana, playing the black side of a Slav Defence, sacrificed two pawns. The top seed succeeded in sowing doubts in his opponent's mind with his novelty on the ninth move. Ding had fallen behind the clock by about an hour after 20 moves.
But, soon he found that Caruana had little compensation for the two pawns. Black then gave up a knight for two pawns, on the 35th move, but he was clearly losing. He resigned seven moves later.
The results (third round): Ding Liren (Chn) 1 bt Fabiano Caruana (US) 1.5; Kirill Alekseenko (Rus) 1 drew with Ian Nepomniachtchi (Rus) 2; Alexander Grischuk (Rus) 1.5 drew with Wang Hao (Chn) 2; Anish Giri (Ned) 1 drew with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra) 2.
