The awesome Sindarov piece centralization in the World Championship Candidates 2026 matches

Out of Sindarov's 5 wins in the first 6 games of the World Championship Candidates 2026 event, there is a common theme running in 4 of them - his propensity to centralize a minor piece above other considerations. He can give up material to establish to maximize the piece's control of squares and the decisions actually put a lot of pressure on his opponents, causing them to burn up precious time, leading them to fumble subsequently and eventually lose. 

First of all, let's look at what he did against Esipenko in Round 1.

OK this looks pretty normal. Bishop gets replaced by knight if taken and Black of course will not capture the bishop since ...Nxe5 dxe5 exposes Black's d5-pawn to be attacked. 

Then we look at his game against Praggnanandhaa.  This time, to maintain his centralized bishop and to prevent the Indian GM from getting the better center, he decided to sacrifice his knight. 

In the Nakamura game, this time the American GM was the one shedding material as he tried to gun down Sindarov on the kingside. Cool as cucumber, Sindarov used the age old adage that 'a flank attack is best met by central action' and calmly rerouted and centralized his b4-knight to the d4-square.

In the game against the mercurial Chinese GM Wei Yi, when he was offered a pawn sacrifice, he counter-offered the f6-pawn in order to anchor a bishop on d4 and it virtually forced Wei Yi to spend 40 minutes or so to find a plan against Black's activity.

So it's quite evident that Sindarov not only had excellent preparation and very strong nerves, he also has a very strong classical chess foundation (Uzbek school of chess is definitely on the rise) and does not hesitate to shell out material to extract the maximum from his minor pieces. 

As for the author, I can only recall one such personal example of establishing a strong centralized piece which puts extreme pressure on the opponent to make him tilt. 

Thanks for reading and it will be interesting to see how Sindarov intends to play in the 2nd half of the event, given his 1.5 point lead after 6 games.