Pragg Beats Arjun, Leads With Abdusattorov—7/7 For White In Challengers
GMs Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and Nodirbek Abdusattorov scored the only wins in round three of the 2025 Tata Steel Chess Masters to take the lead on 2.5/3. Praggnanandhaa outplayed GM Arjun Erigaisi in a strategic masterpiece, while Abdusattorov spotted a tactic to win a pawn vs. GM Max Warmerdam and prevailed in the complications that followed. The day's big clash, World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju vs. GM Fabiano Caruana, was the first of five draws, after a sharp battle ended in a perhaps premature repetition of moves.
The Tata Steel Chess Challengers saw an incredible seven wins for White, including a first win in Wijk aan Zee for 11-year-old IM Faustino Oro, while 14-year-old IM Lu Miaoyi co-leads on 2.5/3 after beating her second grandmaster in three games. She's joined by GMs Erwin l'Ami and Thai Dai Van Nguyen.
Round four starts on Tuesday, January 21, at 8 a.m. ET/ 14:00 CET / 6:30 p.m. IST.
Masters: Praggnanandhaa And Abdusattorov Break Clear
There were just two wins in round three of the Masters.
Tata Steel Masters: Round 3 Results
Praggnanandhaa and Abdusattorov are now the frontrunners, while everyone is off the mark.
Tata Steel Masters: Standings After Round 3
Praggnanandhaa 1-0 Arjun
The smoothest win of the day got off to the most unusual start. About Arjun going for a quiet position with queens exchanged on move seven, Praggnanandhaa said:
Honestly, this was a shocker for me that he went for this because Arjun is known for his trying to play fighting chess and also more complex positions. This is the only line I didn’t look at today because I didn’t think he would go for it, especially when he’s on -1, but yeah, I looked at this 2-3 years back, but I couldn’t remember a single detail!
This is the only line I didn't look at today because I didn't think he would go for it!
—Praggnanandhaa on Arjun's opening choice
What followed was a model positional win for Praggnanandhaa, with our Game of the Day analyzed by GM Rafael Leitao below.
Praggnanandhaa beats Arjun to take the #TataSteelChess lead & re-enter the Top 10, ahead of Anand!
— chess24 (@chess24com) January 20, 2025
For Arjun the Wijk nightmare goes on—since winning the Challengers with 10.5/13 (!) in 2023, he's played 16 games in the Masters, losing 7 & winning 0 🤯https://t.co/2efofw0CDq pic.twitter.com/3goCF3Wll5
The knight maneuvers appealed to GM Hikaru Nakamura, who also has recapped the game.
The contrast between the winner and loser couldn't have been more stark, with Praggnanandhaa's second win in a row returning him to the top 10 on the live rating list.
Praggnanandhaa has been in the top 10 before and said that the player he overtook, GM Viswanathan Anand, has joked with him about it: "This race between you and me, you’re winning one game, then you lose one game—just go past me or something!"
Praggnanandhaa pointed out that good starts for him in Wijk aan Zee don't tend to last, telling WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni, "The first half is always good, but then everything starts from the second half." For the world number-four, however, that would be a luxury problem to have. After winning the Challengers in 2022 with a stunning 10.5/13 (8 wins, 0 losses), Arjun has now gone 16 Masters games without a win, during which time he's lost seven games. That includes two this year, and five in his last appearance in 2023, when he finished last. Can he get out of the tailspin?
Warmerdam 0-1 Abdusattorov
Warmerdam was down to under five minutes when he played 35.Nd5?, attacking Abdusattorov's queen but overlooking the blow 35...Nxh3+!.
If the knight is captured, the black queen checks on g5 and then grabs the knight on d2, before or after capturing on d5. It felt like game-over, but in fact the Dutch star then went on to put up fantastic resistance, using the open third rank and his pressure on the e5-pawn to generate excellent compensation for the missing material.
In the end it was only on move 52 that the game was decided, with 52.Qc3? running into trouble, while 52.Kb1! would have left Abdusattorov still needing to try and provoke a mistake.
That win denied Praggnanandhaa the sole lead, with Abdusattorov looking to improve on his second places in 2023 and 2024.
All the remaining games were drawn. While GM Jorden van Foreest vs. GM Alexey Sarana, GM Anish Giri vs. GM Vladimir Fedoseev, and GM Leon Luke Mendonca vs. GM Pentala Harikrishna were relatively uneventful, the same couldn't be said for the other two clashes, which featured Black throwing flank pawns down the board.
It's the day of playing g5 and h5 as Black! #TataSteelChess pic.twitter.com/yLNDDFqffb
— chess24 (@chess24com) January 20, 2025
Gukesh vs. Caruana, the world champion vs. the top seed, was the most anticipated game of the round, and it didn't disappoint... until it suddenly did, when the players repeated moves for a draw.
Caruana correctly claims a draw by repetition against Gukesh in a position where it seems Gukesh still had an advantage! #TataSteelChess pic.twitter.com/CudC1eOTGa
— chess24 (@chess24com) January 20, 2025
It was perhaps a surprise, since we'd been used to Gukesh always playing on when he could against GM Ding Liren in Singapore, but Gukesh explained that had been a match strategy, while in this particular game he'd "misevaluated that it might be more risky for me."
Gukesh and Caruana are both on a healthy +1, as is GM Vincent Keymer, despite being completely lost at stages of his first two games. In round three, he had outprepared GM Wei Yi, so that when his Chinese opponent made a mistake with 17.f4?! (17.Nb5!) he had over an hour extra on the clock.
Despite investing 40 minutes, however, Keymer couldn't work out the flaw in the move over the board and got into some difficulty before the wild position ended in a draw by repetition.
There are still 10 rounds to go, with the leaders both having White in Tuesday's round four. Abdusattorov takes on defending champion Wei, while Praggnanandhaa faces his compatriot Mendonca.
Challengers: Whitewash
Round three of the Challengers produced a picture we don't see often—seven wins out of seven for White!
Tata Steel Challengers: Round 3 Results
That saw a seven-way tie for first reduced to a three-way tie, featuring Nguyen, L'Ami, and, most remarkably, 14-year-old Lu Miaoyi.
Tata Steel Challengers: Standings After Round 3
One reason the whitewash was possible is that White was higher-rated on all boards... except for Lu. Her current rating is likely to rise fast, however. Already the world's second-highest-rated female junior (after 19-year-old IM Divya Deshmukh), the Chinese star has picked up almost 15 points in Wijk after scoring a career-best win in round three.
20.Ne4! was applying heavy pressure to GM Frederik Svane, but there was no need for him to collapse on the spot as he did with 20...Bf5?.
Lu was ruthless.
The other big prodigy news of the day was that 11-year-old Oro scored his first win in Wijk aan Zee. "I believe it was a very pretty game. I like how I played and I'm really happy!" he said afterward. If this kid is the future of chess, then it's going to be a lot of fun!
IM Irina Bulmaga had picked a passive but extremely solid setup with Black, but Oro identified 18...Nc8? as the point he could take over with 19.e4!—"a change of the structure but great for me!"
Oro, the world's youngest IM, said he's aiming step-by-step to become a GM, but "if I do it this year, it's better!" His goal for the tournament? "The first GM norm is my goal, or well, win the tournament and qualify to the Masters, obviously!"
The first GM norm is my goal, or well, win the tournament and qualify to the Masters, obviously!
—Faustino Oro
He'll have Black against GM Benjamin Bok in round four.
How To Watch
The 87th edition of Tata Steel Chess takes place January 18-February 2, 2025, in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands. The time control is 100 minutes for 40 moves followed by 50 minutes to finish each game, with a 30-second increment from move one. Both the Masters and Challengers groups are 14-player round-robin tournaments.
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.
