[Event "FIDE Women's Candidates 2024"] [Site "Toronto, Canada"] [Date "2024.04.05"] [Round "2.1"] [White "Tan, Zhongyi"] [Black "Vaishali, Rameshbabu"] [Result "1-0"] [WhiteElo "2521"] [BlackElo "2475"] [Annotator "WGM Tatev Abrahamyan"] [Variant "Standard"] [ECO "D01"] [Opening "Rapport-Jobava System"] [Source "https://lichess.org/study/Mez4h4WA/aVC0RGO4"] [Orientation "white"] { Annotations by WGM Tatev Abrahamyan } 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nc3 d5 3. Bf4 { The Jobava London! } 3... c5 4. e3 cxd4 5. exd4 a6 6. Nf3 Nc6 7. h3 Bf5 { So far so good, but Vaishali did spend 20 minutes on this move. } 8. Bd3 Bxd3 9. Qxd3 e6 10. O-O Bd6 11. Bxd6 Qxd6 12. Rfe1 O-O { Black can be happy with the outcome of the opening. } 13. a3 Qc7 14. Na2 Rac8 15. c3 Ne4 16. Qe2 Na5 17. Nb4 Nb3 18. Rad1 { These types of positions can be very annoying to play. They look very harmless, but Black's moves are not super obvious, whereas White has more of a clear plan of putting a knight on e5 and pushing the kingside pawns. } 18... a5 19. Nd3 a4 { The pawn advance looks perfectly normal, but at the same time it kills any idea of executing a minority attack. With the queenside shut down, the play shifts to the center and the kingside, where White is more comfortable. } 20. Nfe5 Na5 21. f3 Nd6 22. Nf4 Nac4 23. Ned3 Rfe8 24. Qf2 Re7 25. Re2 Rce8 26. Rde1 b6 27. g4! { White starts the operations on the kingside. Again, I find it difficult to suggest any concrete solutions for Black, but we can already sense the long-term danger: the knights don't really have any more good squares and the white pawns will start moving down the board. } 27... Nb5 28. Qh4 Qd6 29. Nh5 f6 30. g5 { With the Black knights far away, the attack plays itself. } 30... f5? { This move loses the game immediately. While it is easy to call this a blunder, this is a result of Black not having a plan and being under pressure for many moves already. } 31. Rg2 Kh8 32. Ndf4 e5 33. Nf6! gxf6 34. Ng6+ { A smooth victory by Tan. } 1-0