FIDE Candidates 2026: Vaishali suffers first defeat in round 5; Pragg, Divya draw

GM Vaishali Rameshbabu faced her first defeat of the tournament in the fifth round of the FIDE Women's Candidates, against Zhu Jiner of China in Cyprus on Friday.

She has now slipped to the last place in the standings with 2 points, and is now a point behind the three leaders, Zhu, Bibisara Assaubayeva (KAZ) and Kateryna Lagno (RUS).

Zhu played an aggressive Italian Game from the start, launching a strong queenside attack and never giving Vaishali any real chance, despite not playing a perfect game herself.

Meanwhile, Divya Deshmukh, who was playing with the black pieces, held Tan Zhongyi of China to a draw in a high-quality game where both players maintained accuracies above 98 per cent.

With this, she joined Vaishali and Tan at 2 points each and is currently sitting in the second-to-last position after the five games.

In the open section, R Praggnandhaa, with the white pieces, played yet another draw in the fifth round against Andrey Esipenko of Russia.

Both players played a solid game and didn't give an inch to each other, resulting in a draw on three-fold repetition in a very quick game of  just 31 moves.

He is now tied for third place with 2.5 points, trailing the leader Javokhir Sindarov by 2 points. He will need to find some wins soon to keep his World Championship hopes alive.