In a last minute finish on Sunday, Feb. 2, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabum, a teenage chess grandmaster from India, won the 2025 Tata Steel Chess Tournament after spending the tournament trading the points lead with fellow grandmasters Gukesh Dommaraju and Nodirbek Abdusattorov. This result was more surprising considering Gukesh’s strong performance during the last stretch of the tournament, the last-minute elimination of Nodirbek by a penultimate round loss to Arjun Erigaisi and a last round draw against Pentala Harikrishna, one of Gukesh’s seconds in the past.
Meanwhile, Gukesh also lost to Arjun, his first loss since recently winning the World Championship, to tumble out of uncontested first place. These two wins mark Arjun’s first wins at Wijk since the 2023 edition. After a record of 9 losses and 15 since his elevation to the Masters tournament, Arjun beat the #2 and #3 players in the tournament in back-to-back games. It’s good seeing the Grandmaster win and break what seemed to be a curse.
After tumbling out of the tiebreaks, Praggnanandhaa and Gukesh were left tied at 8 1⁄2 each, leading to a two-game playoff between the players. Gukesh won the first game, but then lost the next game in a slow-grindy manner, moving the playoff to sudden death. In the last game of the tournament, Gukesh chose to avoid a draw by repetition, and instead made the call to continue to play, only to blunder and lose the tournament. It’s a second place finish and a less than ideal result for the World Chess Champion, but remains incredibly impressive. Second at Wijk is an amazing result, even for Gukesh, and as Arjun reminds us with his 25 game winless streak, chess is hard.
Regardless, this is a huge victory for classical chess and FIDE during a time when Magnus Carlsen and other chess figures are pushing towards sweeping changes and different organizations. Among all of that, this was an incredible classical tournament with some beautiful moves.
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