Niemann Sacs Queen To Lead Tata Steel Chess With Abdusattorov
GM Hans Niemann scored a brilliant win over GM Aravindh Chithambaram to join GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov in the lead of the 2026 Tata Steel Chess Masters on three points out of four. Abdusattorov was the first player to beat GM Thai Dai Van Nguyen, while the day's other win was scored by GM Javokhir Sindarov, who unleashed the combination of the day to punish one loose move by GM Matthias Bluebaum. Dutch GMs Anish Giri and Jorden van Foreest survived scares to hold long endgames against GMs Arjun Erigaisi and Vladimir Fedoseev, respectively.
Once again the 2026 Tata Steel Chess Challengers saw six decisive games, with GM Aydin Suleymanli beating IM Lu Miaoyi to retain the sole lead on 3.5/4, while GMs Marc'Andria Maurizzi, Andy Woodward, and IM Faustino Oro all won to stay within half a point. The day's other winners were IM Carissa Yip and GM Erwin l'Ami, with the Dutchman bouncing back from three losses by beating GM Vasyl Ivanchuk.
Round five starts on Wednesday, January 21, at 8 a.m. ET/ 14:00 CET / 6:30 p.m. IST.
- Masters: Niemann, Abdusattorov Take Lead As Sindarov Plays Brilliancy
- Challengers: Suleymanli Keeps Lead On Another Day Of 6 Wins
Masters: Niemann, Abdusattorov Take Lead As Sindarov Plays Brilliancy
Tata Steel Masters: Round 4 Results
We saw three powerful wins in round four, and some intense draws, including in the repeat of last year's playoff, GM Gukesh Dommaraju vs. GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu.
Tata Steel Masters: Standings After Round 4
Five leaders have been reduced to two, with Sindarov joining a three-player pack half a point behind.
The most anticipated clash of round four was perhaps Gukesh-Praggnanandhaa, but neither of the players who competed for the title in a playoff in 2025 is yet firing on all cylinders.
Defending champion Praggnanandhaa opened with two losses, while the world champion has yet to pick up a win. Their round-four encounter saw an offbeat line of the French, and could easily have gone off the rails when the players got low on time, but in the end no blood was spilled.
Gukesh-Praggnanandhaa ends in a draw — no wins yet this year for last year's playoff participants! https://t.co/ge7WdbRsFP pic.twitter.com/2UyxG2qltG
— chess24 (@chess24com) January 20, 2026
The draws were all hard-fought. GM Vincent Keymer stopped the bleeding against 14-year-old GM Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus after neither player went astray in what became a potentially tricky pawn endgame.
If the balance was never seriously disturbed in either of those games, the same couldn't be said about the remaining draws. When Arjun won a pawn against Giri, he looked on course to join the leaders, but one rash pawn push by Arjun and some fine defense by the local star saw the game end in an 80-move draw.
It was a similar story in Fedoseev-Van Foreest. The Dutch number-two was briefly lost in a rook endgame, but eventually managed to plot a study-like escape in a position two pawns down.
The remaining three games were decisive, however, and all of them featured much to admire.
Aravindh 0-1 Niemann
Niemann exuded confidence in his pre-round interview with WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni...
Fiona: "Are you working with a second here, Hans?"
— chess24 (@chess24com) January 20, 2026
Hans: "My team is plentiful and dangerous!" #TataSteelChess pic.twitter.com/hpTtOLa3Ti
...and he carried it into the game against Aravindh. It helped that things went his way early on, but he mentioned that at some point he simply had to give up calculating and try to play logical moves. He summed up:
So many sacrifices, such imbalances, many moments when you can make mistakes, so you feel the tension. Obviously with Black to win like this is a huge gift in such a difficult tournament.
The highlight was the queen sac 36...Nxe5!!, taking advantage of how powerful it was to have a pawn on b2 and threats of back-rank checkmate.
That's our Game of the Day, which GM Dejan Bojkov analyzes below.
That victory, following the 16-move win against Fedoseev in round one, took Niemann into the lead on 3/4, where he was joined by one other player: Abdusattorov.
Abdusattorov 1-0 Van Nguyen
Van Nguyen won the 2025 Challengers and has been very impressive so far on his Masters debut. He barely looked troubled, and Abdusattorov admitted he fell into a move-order trick and lost the opening battle. The Uzbek star didn't lose his ambition, however, going for the dubious 10.c5!? simply to get his opponent out of preparation, and adding, "We started to play after move 10—this is already an achievement nowadays!"
The game turned 10 moves later, when Van Nguyen could have forced matters in his favor, but instead dropped a pawn and went on to fight a losing battle to hold.
The Uzbek success continued with Sindarov, who approached his game against Bluebaum as a warmup for the Candidates, explaining, "It’s one of the important games of the tournament because Matthias is also playing the Candidates and the game was very interesting—I like how I played!"
Bluebaum 0-1 Sindarov
There was a lot to admire, with Sindarov, like Abdusattorov, seeking out trouble. He played the King's Indian Defense, saying he'd spotted Bluebaum scores badly against it, and was cheerfully unconcerned by the somewhat shaky position he reached: "It’s a typical King’s Indian—you always get some bad position, and then you are playing for your opponent’s mistake!"
It's a typical King's Indian—you always get some bad position, and then you are playing for your opponent's mistake!
—Javokhir Sindarov
The key mistake of the whole game was 24.Qc5?, though Sindarov was shocked to learn afterward that 24.Qd7! and 24.Qb4!, two moves he hadn't calculated at all, should hold.
24...Nd3!! was the stunning and only winning move that Sindarov uncorked here, but when it appeared on the board, Bluebaum hadn't yet realized he was losing. He only understood his predicament when Sindarov later followed up with 27...g5!, clearing a path for the rook to reach h6 and deliver checkmate. Bluebaum was visibly furious with himself before he went on to resign.
Huge frustration for Bluebaum as he realizes he's completely busted vs. Sindarov after 27...g5! https://t.co/FNaePcHMac#TataSteelChess pic.twitter.com/808ywsCqKi
— chess24 (@chess24com) January 20, 2026
Once again there would be more decisive action in the Challengers.
Challengers: Suleymanli Keeps Lead On Another Day Of 6 Wins
It was another wild day in the Challengers, with just one draw—in a game where GM Daniil Yuffa had a tablebase win over GM Bibisara Assaubayeva, but grabbed a poisoned pawn.
Tata Steel Challengers: Round 4 Results
20-year-old Suleymanli managed to win again and keep the sole lead, but 18-year-old Maurizzi, 15-year-old Woodward, and 12-year-old Oro are breathing down his neck just half a point behind.
Tata Steel Challengers: Standings After Round 4
Suleymanli took the sole lead in the Challengers from Lu, and in round four he won their head-to-head clash. Lu got tantalizingly close to making a draw, but was ultimately outplayed in a minor piece endgame.
That meant no one could catch Suleymanli, but three of the players in the chasing pack kept pace with wins. Woodward made it three wins in a row and three losses in four games for GM Max Warmerdam, Maurizzi outplayed GM Velimir Ivic, and 12-year-old Oro found a nice tactic to end the resistance of IM Eline Roebers.
"From the opening to the end, I dominated very, very well. I played a good game," said Oro, who spent 17 minutes discussing the game with Steil-Antoni.
With two wins and two draws, Oro is now on 3/4, just half a point shy of the 3.5 he scored in 13 rounds in 2025.
It wasn't all bad news for Dutch fans, however, since after three losses L'Ami finally struck to beat a player he called "an absolute legend," Ivanchuk. L'Ami revealed his battle cry had been, "Let’s just go down in flames!" as he gave up an exchange, but it all worked out in the end, with Ivanchuk losing an edge and then playing too quickly in what followed.
A convincing bounce-back win for Yip over FM Panesar Vedant wrapped up the day's action.
There's one more round before the first rest day, and the obvious game to watch will be Niemann-Abdusattorov, a clash of the leaders.
The 88th edition of Tata Steel Chess takes place January 17-February 1, 2026, in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands. Both the Masters and Challengers groups are 14-player round-robin tournaments. The time control is 120 minutes for 40 moves followed by 30 minutes to the end of the game, with a 30-second increment only from move 41. No draw offers are allowed before move 40.
Previous coverage:
Colin McGourty led news at Chess24 from its launch until it merged with Chess.com a decade later. An amateur player, he got into chess writing when he set up the website Chess in Translation after previously studying Slavic languages and literature in St. Andrews, Odesa, Oxford, and Krakow.
