India continues to shine in the women’s singles chess event at the ongoing FIDE Candidates Tournament 2026. Indian grandmaster R. Vaishali and Divya Deshmukh ended with different results in their respective matches of Round 7. Vaishali claimed her second win of the tournament, while Deshmukh settled for a draw. In the Round 7 game, Vaishali defeated Tan Zhongyi. The Indian won the match by full points after moving to four out of seven.
Zhongyi made a series of errors in the sequence around moving 36 to 38 – Rc6, Kg7, Ra1, which resulted in Vaishali’s advantage to get a full point. For Vaishali, the highlight of the match came after 38 with Rxf6, where she won a pawn and found opening lines towards the black king. Zhongyi once again erred with Kxf6 and exposed her king without any pawn to shield. Vaishali took advantage of the situation that forced her opponent to resign.
With this win, the Indian grandmaster now ranks second, behind Anna Muzychuk. Muzychuk leads with 4.5 points after her draw against Bibisara. Zhu Jiner also drew her match against Aleksandra Goryachkina. Meanwhile, Deshmukh ended up in a draw against three-time World Blitz champion Kateryna Lagno. After the 93rd move, the Indian suffered disappointment, slipping by a full point and instead had to settle for a draw.
In the first half of the game, Deshmukh got herself a winning edge in the endgame with a pawn structure and king at the centre. She started to go down after slipping on repeated rook checks (Rd8–Rd7+–Rd8), which instead gave Lagno the chance to regroup. In the final phase, Deshmukh tried to push her King forward, but Lagno’s rook was active, and in a symmetrical style that made it uneasy to defend.
Elsewhere, India’s men’s chess grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa ended in a threefold-repetition draw against Fabiano Caruana. Hikaru Nakamura also ended in a draw against Matthias Bluebaum. India’s Anish Giri also took Javokhir Sindarov to a draw, China’s Wei Yi was the only winner of the round after defeating Andrey Esipenko.
