Giri Beats Leader Abdusattorov As Gukesh Bounces Back
An incredible weekend for Dutch GM Anish Giri ended with him adding victory with Black over leader GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov to his win over World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju the day before. Abdusattorov still leads the 2026 Tata Steel Chess Masters by half a point ahead of his Uzbek countryman GM Javokhir Sindarov, the only remaining unbeaten player after a draw against GM Vincent Keymer. Gukesh hit back with a fine win over GM Vladimir Fedoseev, while the other games were drawn.
GMs Marc'Andria Maurizzi and Andy Woodward still lead the 2026 Tata Steel Chess Challengers after both won in round eight, against IMs Lu Miaoyi and Faustino Oro respectively. GM Aydin Suleymanli beat IM Carissa Yip to remain in third, while GM Vasyl Ivanchuk is fourth after emerging victorious from more time-trouble mayhem, this time against GM Max Warmerdam. We nearly had all-decisive games but GM Daniil Yuffa let FM Panesar Vedant escape in 139 moves.
Round nine, after a rest day, starts on Tuesday, January 27, at 8 a.m. ET/ 14:00 CET / 6:30 p.m. IST.
Masters: Giri On Fire As Gukesh Bounces Back
There were just two wins in round eight, but they included a loss for the leader.
Tata Steel Masters: Round 8 Results
Abdusattorov's lead has been cut to half a point over Sindarov, with GMs Hans Niemann, Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, and Jorden van Foreest all moving within striking distance of the leader.
Tata Steel Masters: Standings After Round 8
Abdusattorov 0-1 Giri
"Before the tournament, we said this was going to be a difficult patch," said Giri of how he and his second had looked at a weekend when he had the black pieces against Gukesh and then Abdusattorov. Instead it couldn't have gone better with two powerful wins in unusual opening variations. "The big question is whose king is weaker," is how he summed up the strategic battle.
Here Abdusattorov's 20.Qd3? seems to have been the first serious misstep, and though there were some surprising chances for the leader in what followed, overall Giri kept an iron grip on the position. WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni tried to tease out how far the Dutch star's preparation had stretched, provoking the following declaration:
My prep basically never started and never ended. I am my prep; it’s just me. You have to understand, prep is not like some device somewhere, far away from you.... It’s like when you’re going to the battle, you have to wear your armor. Of course, if I come out naked, then these guys will smoke me, so I’m coming with my armor, but then it’s just me.
My prep basically never started and never ended. I am my prep!
—Anish Giri
Giri noted that for some other players prep is something detached from them, and when they leave it they can be lost, but he did also end the interview by stating, "I just didn’t want to tell you when my preparation ended so I made up some nonsense!"
In any case, the game itself was a great battle, and that's our Game of the Day, which GM Dejan Bojkov has analyzed below.
The good news for Abdusattorov is that he retained the lead, since Sindarov, the one player who could catch him, defended energetically with the black pieces to make the quietest draw of the day, against Keymer.
In fact, there was just one other win.
Fedoseev 0-1 Gukesh
Gukesh had experienced two days to forget, but ended the weekend on a high. He was asked about his shocking blunder against Abdusattorov and responded:
The best part about it is that I cannot even explain how that happened. These kinds of blunders are maybe easier to handle than something you can explain. So this just happens. Sh*t happens!
He continued, "I managed to move on, but I think the more painful game was against Anish because I was just completely off and I played one of the worst games in quite a while."
Gukesh called it "a good challenge" to try and play well after those blows, and against Fedoseev he managed.
"He's a very interesting player, and we got a very interesting game," said Gukesh, who noted 18.e4?! as the moment when he could take over.
"Because of his knight on g3 and bad coordination, I thought 18...c5! has to work somehow."
It did, and a move later he was able to offer a sacrifice of the bishop on b7. Then Gukesh called it "really enjoyable" that he got to "artistically" trap the white knight before the game was ultimately decided by tactics. 38.Ra1! and the game would have gone on, but 38.Nxc3? ran into 38...Rb3! and it was all over.
Fedoseev gave a wry smile, with material loss inevitable.
Although all the remaining games in the Masters were drawn, none of them were without incident.
GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu found himself a pawn down in a tricky endgame and likely to be 14-year-old Erdogmus' third victim in a row...
Simon christens Erdogmus rocking back and forth "the death sway!" #TataSteelChess pic.twitter.com/CFSkPUG5r2
— chess24 (@chess24com) January 25, 2026
... but the advantage fizzled away in the run-up to the time control.
Niemann was pushing for a third win, in a Sveshnikov Sicilian, but the edge evaporated until it was Van Foreest who had some advantage before a draw was reached on move 50.
A similar storyline unfolded in GM Aravindh Chithambaram vs. GM Arjun Erigaisi, which was every bit as wild as you'd expect between two such creative players.
We've left the most exciting draw to last. GM Matthias Bluebaum had pounced on an opening mistake by GM Thai Dai Van Nguyen to seize a winning advantage, with Van Nguyen also in deep trouble on the clock. The Czech GM commented, "I already felt I will resign at any moment, without time and in a completely lost position, but somehow suddenly I saw some tactical ideas and I got excited, so it was a mix of excitement, stress, and nervousness."
30.f4? was Bluebaum's big mistake, but when Van Nguyen found 30...Qe2!! he hadn't yet realized he was suddenly equal, saying, "It’s the only move that I can even try to hope for a fight."
Van Nguyen still felt doomed, on the clock if not the board, but managed to hold on and even briefly gain an edge, though not one he had the time to pursue. Instead Bluebaum was forced to take a draw by repetition, which left him, not for the first time this event, looking shell-shocked with his head in his hands.
"100 percent the most crazy game I’ve ever played," is how Van Nguyen summed things up.
Challengers: Maurizzi, Woodward Keep Winning
We were a whisker away from a day of all-decisive games in the Challengers, with Yuffa missing multiple opportunities to finish off Panesar in their 139-move clash.
Tata Steel Challengers: Round 8 Results
Because the players chasing first place and promotion to the Masters all won in round eight, the relative standings were unchanged, but a full-point gap opened up below Ivanchuk.
Tata Steel Challengers: Standings After Round 8
The Challengers is all about winning and qualifying for next year's Masters, with 20-year-old Suleymanli knowing how difficult that is from bitter experience:
In this tournament, you don’t have to play good. You have to play amazing to win the tournament because actually last year I think I played amazing but still didn’t get it!
In this tournament, you don't have to play good. You have to play amazing to win!
—Aydin Suleymanli
In 2025 he scored the same as Van Nguyen but lost out on tiebreaks, and added, "After the tournament, maybe two months I just thought about this game, what would happen if I came first and play the Masters?"
Suleymanli is keeping fighting this year, however, and in round eight he beat Yip, finding some nice tactics to wrap things up.
That wasn't enough to catch the leaders, however, since both Maurizzi and Woodward scored convincing wins.
Ivanchuk, in fourth place, also won convincingly, at least if you look at the moves he played against Warmerdam. In terms of time, it again came down to seconds... and mayhem: it's notable that his two-handed queening here was cause for the arbiter to stop the game once again.
Ivanchuk beats the clock again, this time with 13 seconds for 4 moves! https://t.co/mmHH9yVyM3 pic.twitter.com/3vluRFZYol
— chess24 (@chess24com) January 25, 2026
The players now have a very well-deserved rest day, while on Tuesday we'll see a clash of the top two in the Masters, Sindarov vs. Abdusattorov.
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:
- Round 7: Abdusattorov Grows Lead As Giri Beats Gukesh
- Round 6: Abdusattorov Pounces On Gukesh's Blunder To Grab Sole Lead
- Round 5: Sindarov Catches Leaders As Gukesh, Keymer, Fedoseev Also Strike
- Round 4: Niemann Sacs Queen To Lead Tata Steel Chess With Abdusattorov
- Round 3: Van Foreest, Bluebaum Beat Giri, Keymer To Join 5-Way Tie For Lead
- Round 2: Abdusattorov Beats Praggnanandhaa; Lu Miaoyi Takes Sole Lead In Challengers
- Round 1: Sindarov Denies Gukesh As Niemann, Keymer, Arjun Pounce On Blunders
- Tata Steel Chess 2026: All The Information
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.
