I used to have this special setups on my Firefox and did not actually able to find a solution on Chrome, Google Chrome tends to open >a target=”_blank” in a new popup, which I do not like.
Came across a post over mydigitallife and find that there is actually an extension on Chrome to do so called “One Window”..

Yes, one more reason NOT to fall back to Firefox, which I found it goes slower and slower with my usage…. (I still need it tho for testing web developing….but it is now not my primary browser anymore.)

Links
mydigitallife – How to Force Google Chrome to Open Link and Pop-Up in New Tab
Chrome Web Store – Extensions – One Window