Gukesh Breaks Clear; Fedoseev, Giri Also Win
GM Gukesh Dommaraju leads his first tournament as world champion after defeating GM Leon Luke Mendonca in round nine to move to 6.5/9 in the 2025 Tata Steel Chess Masters. He's half a point ahead of GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who made a draw against GM Fabiano Caruana, and GM Vladimir Fedoseev, whose fourth win in six games came against GM Pentala Harikrishna. GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu began the day as co-leader, but now trails Gukesh by a point after losing to GM Anish Giri.
GM Thai Dai Van Nguyen continues as the sole leader of the 2025 Tata Steel Chess Challengers on 6.5/9, with GM Benjamin Bok now level with GM Erwin l'Ami half a point behind after beating IM Irina Bulmaga. The only other decisive game saw IM Faustino Oro crack on move 87 of a pawn-down endgame against GM Ediz Gurel.
Round 10 starts on Wednesday, January 29, at 8 a.m. ET / 14:00 CET / 6:30 p.m. IST.
Masters: Gukesh Takes Sole Lead; Fedoseev Joins Abdusattorov In 2nd
Tata Steel Chess Masters: Round 9 Results
After the rest day we saw three wins in the Masters, all for the white pieces.
That broke up the three-way tie for first, with Gukesh taking the sole lead, while Praggnanandhaa dropped to fourth. Fedoseev took over in joint second place with Abdusattorov.
Tata Steel Chess Masters: Standings After Round 9
Gukesh 1-0 Mendonca
Gukesh's third win in a row with the white pieces saw him cross 2790 on the live rating list and take the sole lead for the first time in the tournament. "Happy that I played a good game today!" the world champion told WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni afterward.
The game against the 2024 Challengers winner Mendonca was a fascinating strategic struggle in the Ruy Lopez, and, as so often, our silicon friends didn't necessarily agree with the human assessment of the position. Gukesh thought he was "crushing" after 31.Rf2, and listed all the factors in White's favor: "I have the b4-square, the knight goes to g3, the bishop to b4, and d6 is weak."
It was a winning recipe that worked to perfection after Mendonca used three of his remaining four minutes and played 31...Bc8?, but it turns out 31...h5!, followed by ...h4 and ...h3 if given the chance, would have given Black significant counterplay.
Gukesh beats Mendonca to take the sole lead in #TataSteelChess with 4 rounds to go! https://t.co/TEz6vcgrIB pic.twitter.com/gQlZnMcRTM
— chess24 (@chess24com) January 28, 2025
Gukesh was the only leader at the start of the day to win, so that he took a half-point lead over Abdusattorov, and also Fedoseev, who posted a remarkable fourth win in just six games.
Fedoseev 1-0 Harikrishna
Fedoseev opened 1.d4 Nf6 2.c3!?, and later explained he just wanted, in a common refrain of modern chess players, "to get a game." He elaborated:
If I’m not seeing myself in the mood of checking deep lines and to prepare concretely I can still go for this setup and so far it’s working well for me. I already won a couple of games like this, first one against [GM Denis] Kadric in Montenegro in the European Championship, and the second this year, in the Bundesliga, against [GM Jergus] Pechac.
There might have been no deep lines to check, but the opening preparation to face Harikrishna wasn't fast! How long had it taken?
Five hours of brainstorming yesterday, because I couldn’t find any idea how to play against him, he’s so solid in all openings. I checked his games. In 2024 he lost only once, to [GM] Ivan Cheparinov, out of 20-25 classical games. In this game he lost in the Berlin endgame!
The unusual opening would work out perfectly, leading to a position that was "very, very playable with a lot of pieces," and what followed is our Game of the Day, with analysis by GM Rafael Leitao below.
That win means Fedoseev has picked up 17.9 rating points in Wijk aan Zee, climbing to number 14 on the live rating list.
For one of the pre-round leaders, things would go badly, with Praggnanandhaa getting ground down by Giri in the longest game of the day.
Giri 1-0 Praggnanandhaa
Giri's results in his home supertournament have been exceptional in recent years, with 2020 the last time he struggled to win games.
- 2024: 8.5/13, 1st= (5 wins)
- 2023: 8.5/13, 1st (4 wins)
- 2022: 7.5/13, 4th (4 wins)
- 2021: 8.5/13, 1st= (4 wins)
- 2020: 6.5/13, 6th= (1 win)
This year he'd made seven draws, no wins, and a heartbreaking loss from a won position against Gukesh in round one. In round nine, however, he broke through to impressively outplay the high-flying Praggnanandhaa.
Giri seized a big advantage early in the middlegame after his opponent's 17...e5?!, but then let some of the edge slip. It was only later, after a tactical sequence, that the final mistake was a case of GM Ben Finegold's famous axiom, "Never play f6!" From there it was suffering to the end of the game.
Giri scores his 1st win of #TataSteelChess 2025 and deals a blow to Praggnanandhaa's tournament winning chances! https://t.co/g2FgvNpvcv pic.twitter.com/6qyKqqfEhP
— chess24 (@chess24com) January 28, 2025
Elsewhere there were relatively uneventful draws in GM Wei Yi vs. GM Arjun Erigaisi (22 Masters games without a win now) and GM Alexey Sarana vs. GM Vincent Keymer, but in the remaining two games there was a big missed moment.
Caruana had a fleeting chance to take down co-leader Abdusattorov, but explained why it was easy to overlook: "The whole game was very balanced, the opening was extremely dry, and I really wasn’t expecting to get anything of it."
The moment of truth arose after 29...Rad8?.
The other miss was an even bigger chance, but anything but easy to spot! GM Max Warmerdam's queen was attacked, but he played 23...Nxc3?!?, a brilliant move, but one with a flaw that GM Jorden van Foreest missed.
There's now one more game before a last rest day, and then we get the final three rounds over the weekend. In Wednesday's round 10, we have Warmerdam-Gukesh, Abdusattorov-Sarana, and Praggnanandhaa-Fedoseev in the games of the leaders.
Challengers: Bok, Gurel Move Up
There were just two wins in round nine of the Challengers.
Tata Steel Chess Challengers: Round 9 Results
Bok's win moved him within half a point of first place, while 16-year-old Gurel is now 1.5 points off first in the race to qualify for next year's Masters.
Tata Steel Chess Challengers: Standings After Round 9
It was a surprisingly quiet day for the Challengers, with Bok easing to a victory after playing the Sicilian and castling on opposite sides against Bulmaga, who has now lost seven out of nine games.
The longest battle of the day saw 16-year-old Gurel overcome 11-year-old Oro in 89 moves, just when it seemed Oro was on the brink of escaping.
Van Nguyen still leads and has White against IM Vaishali Rameshbabu in round 10, while Bok is Black against GM Nodirbek Yakubboev. The player who shares second with Bok, GM Erwin l'Ami, has White against Oro in a clash between the oldest and youngest players in the event.
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:
- Round 8: Caruana, Wei Yi Join Tata Steel Chess Title Race
- Round 7: Gukesh Catches Leaders; Arjun Suffers 4th Loss
- Round 6: Gukesh Pulls Off Great Escape Against Abdusattorov
- Round 5: Fedoseev Beats Caruana; Abdusattorov, Gukesh Also Win Before Showdown
- Round 4: Praggnanandhaa Leads After 3rd Straight Win; Heartbreak For Arjun
- Round 3: Pragg Beats Arjun, Leads With Abdusattorov—7/7 For White In Challengers
- Round 2: Caruana, Abdusattorov, Praggnanandhaa Win To Join Leaders
- Round 1: Gukesh Beats Giri In Thriller As Tata Steel Chess Starts With A Bang
- Tata Steel Chess 2025: 7 Talking Points
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.
