With six rounds to go, the 2024 Tata Steel Chess Tournament is wide open again after GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov beat GM Anish Giri on Saturday. In doing so, the 19-year-old Uzbek grandmaster caught Giri in first place. Soon after, GM Gukesh Dommaraju joined them in the lead by beating GM Max Warmerdam.

In the Challengers, GM Erwin l’Ami suffered his first loss in the tournament, against the Spanish grandmaster Jaime Santos Latasa. The new leader is GM Salem Saleh, who put a halt to IM Eline Roebers’ winning streak.

Results – Masters Round 7

Standings – Masters Round 7

The most crowded day so far in Wijk aan Zee saw hundreds of visitors, including many children who participated in the traditional kids’ festival on the second Sunday. The mostly local crowd witnessed a very bad day for Team Netherlands as the six Dutch players combined scored 0.5/6.

The most important of those five losses was Giri’s, who cannot complain about the fact that he is still in the shared lead. It’s also hard to complain about the game when your opponent played magnificent chess, akin to GM Anatoly Karpov in his best days.

Abdusattorov, who saw Giri run away with tournament victory last year, said he felt that he really needed to win this game in order to keep chances this year. He got surprised as early as move two, when the Dutchman opted for the Petroff, but he had a surprise up his own sleeve: the sideline 5.c4.

“I think he didn’t know this c4-line or maybe he confused it,” said Abdusattorov. “I got a very pleasant position and then it felt like I had very nice positional advantage throughout the game, which I managed to convert.”

For Giri, it must have been an unpleasant game to play as it slowly got harder and harder to find moves. Like many of Karpov’s opponents, he might have wondered where he went wrong.

Abdusattorov: “It’s a very unpleasant endgame and especially because he has no counterplay, he cannot improve his pieces.”

Warmerdam once again came very well-prepared to the board. After 15 moves, the Dutchman had 1:45 on the clock, five more minutes than he started with and an hour more than Gukesh.

The Indian GM repeated moves there, but never had the intention to draw the game. “There was no need to take a draw because the position had no risk for White,” he said.

“I think the rook endgame should also be a draw but okay, already it was not ideal for him and I couldn’t see the clear way to draw actually,” Gukesh added. That clear way did exist for Warmerdam, just once though, on move 53.

GM Alireza Firouzja is having a very up-and-down tournament, with three wins but also two losses already. Today, he went down against GM Vidit Gujrathi, who started his interview with a guru-like quote: “I told myself, you know, a win is like two draws, so it’s better than a draw.”

I told myself, you know, a win is like two draws, so it’s better than a draw.
—Vidit Gujrathi

That’s why Vidit was hoping to “get a game” today, and he did, when Firouzja went for the Najdorf. Vidit has played different systems against it and this time he went for 6.h3, which was answered by the rare 6…Nc6. After castling queenside, Vidit suddenly faced a piece sacrifice he hadn’t seen coming.

“I’ll be completely honest, I did not see 12…Nxc2,” admitted Vidit. “I was in fact semi-lucky that I have 14.Nd2.” There was complete mayhem on the board when Vidit saw himself forced to walk his king all the way back to e1, via d3. 

“I think I played really well once he sacrificed the piece,” he said afterward, and that seems to be the case, as GM Rafael Leitao shows:

The other four games ended in draws, with the clash between GM Wei Yi and GM Ding Liren, known to be good friends, only taking seventeen minutes. Since this year, the tournament has the rule that draw offers before move 30 are not allowed, but if two players want to draw, there’s always a way.

Results – Challengers Round 7

Standings – Challengers Round 7

L’Ami joined the Dutch day of misery with his first loss, but it was fully justified as Santos was more than comfortable from an early stage, and L’Ami never really had a chance.

The new sole leader in the Challengers is Salem, who was too strong for Roebers.

Meanwhile, WGM Divya Desmukh scored her second win of the tournament, winning a rook endgame against Dutch GM Liam Vrolijk.

“I don’t exactly know what his main mistake was because to me it was like completely drawn and I was even thinking of offering a draw at some point, like, after we finished 30 moves,” she said. “But then I was like, okay, I don’t have anything to lose so I might as well just go for it and then suddenly the position got so complicated and I couldn’t understand. I had the draw in hand so yeah, I had no risks, I just went for it.”

Pairings – Masters Round 8

Pairings – Challengers Round 8

The Tata Steel Chess tournament takes place January 13-28, 2024, 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. Both the Masters and Challengers groups are 14-player round-robin tournaments.

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