20-Year-Old Uzbek Star Sindarov Demolishes Candidates Field to Earn World Championship Shot

The world chess championship race just got considerably younger.

Javokhir Sindarov sealed his place in the global title match with a round to spare at the Candidates tournament in Peyia, Cyprus, on Tuesday, confirming what many observers had suspected for weeks: this 20-year-old Uzbek was in a class of his own. A 58-move draw with the black pieces against Dutch grandmaster Anish Giri was enough to take his tally to 9½ points and leave his nearest pursuer two points behind with one round still to play.

It was a wire-to-wire triumph built on precision rather than fireworks. Six victories and seven draws from 13 games — not a single defeat — a performance that left the eight-man field chasing shadows from the opening round. When Giri missed a chance to cut the deficit a day earlier against China’s Wei Yi, the destination of the title shot was effectively sealed.

“After he exchanged queens [20 Qxa6] ... I didn’t have any pressure,” Sindarov reflected. “I felt very comfortable during the game.”

The calm after the queens’ exchange told its own story. Where other Candidates have burned bright then imploded under pressure, Sindarov navigated the double round-robin with a maturity that belied his age. He will round out the tournament on Wednesday with a dead-rubber game as white against Wei, playing out the formality while the rest of the field scrambles for second.

He becomes the youngest challenger for a world championship since a 22-year-old Garry Kasparov dethroned Anatoly Karpov in 1985. When he meets reigning champion Gukesh Dommaraju this autumn — probably in November — both men will be under 21, marking the first time in the 138-year history of world championship play that two Asian players contest the title for the second consecutive cycle.

Gukesh, at 19, became the youngest world champion in history when he beat China’s Ding Liren in Singapore two years ago. He arrives at this rematch after a turbulent spell. “My performance in the last few events has been quite disappointing, not just for me, but for all of you who support me,” he wrote on Instagram last month after a joint-bottom finish in Prague.

Sindarov, by contrast, has climbed to a career-high world ranking of 11th following his World Cup victory last year. That triumph made him the youngest World Cup winner in history, and the Candidates has merely confirmed that his breakthrough was no fluke.

“He’s the youngest champion in history and of course one of the best players in the world,” Sindarov said of Gukesh. “He has a lot of strong skills and it will be a very exciting match. He has a very good team. What can I say, I just wish him good luck.”

The chess world waits to see whether the old guard — Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura — can offer any resistance to a generation that has arrived ahead of schedule. On the evidence of the past two weeks in Cyprus, they may be fighting a losing battle.