Gukesh starts with a very fortunate win against Giri in Round 1 of Tata Steel Masters 2025 - 1
The 2025 Tata Steel Chess tournaments started with a bang with lively play and plenty of decisive results. Gukesh won against Anish Giri in a wild struggle where he was much worse at several stages and on the verge of defeat when Giri blundered away a win to a loss in a single move in time trouble. Vincent Keymer beat Luke Leon Mendonca from a bad position after he made an error after forgetting his preparation in the Two Knights Defence. After that Mendonca started to drift, first of all not playing the most incisive winning try (26.c6), then he allowed Keymer right back in the game (28.h3) and then blundered his position away in one move (31.Rc1?). Pentala Harikrishna beat Arjun Erigaisi in a long grind where he had the advantage of two rooks vs a queen. Praggnanandhaa escaped with a draw against Abdusattorov in a fascinating game, Jorden Van Foreest and Vladimir Fedoseev both had chances in their drawn game. Wei Yi played very conservatively in his draw against Fabiano Caruana and Max Warmerdam drew an interesting game against Alexey Sarana. There were also 5 out of 7 decisive games in the Challengers. So a promising start, judging from this first round the players seem to be going for very complicated positions, it will lead to mistakes, but also entertaining games.
Masters Round 1 Standings: 1st= Gukesh, Harikrishna, Keymer 1pt 4th= Caruana, Abdusattorov, Wei Yi, Praggnanandhaa, Fedoseev, Van Foreest, Sarana, Warmerdam 0.5pts 12th= Erigaisi, Giri, Mendonca 0pts.
Challengers Round 1 Standings: 1st= Nguyen, Yakubboev, Gurel, Vaishali, Lu 1pt 6th= Svane, Suleymanli, L'Ami, Bok 0.5pts 10th= Nogerbek, Divya, Pijpers, Oro, Bulmaga 0pts
Round 2 Pairings Sunday 19th Jan 1pm: Erigaisi-Giri, Fedoseev-Gukesh, Caruana-Van Foreest, Sarana-Wei Yi, Keymer-Warmerdam, Abdusattorov-Mendonca, Harikrishna-Praggnanandhaa.
Round Summary, photos and notes below.