Both day-one leaders built on their momentum to earn maiden titles on day two. GM Wesley So won 2026 Tata Steel Chess India Open Blitz, his first time winning the title after six attempts. He finished in sole first with 12/18, while GMs Nihal Sarin and Arjun Erigaisi tied in second-third, a full point behind.
Debutant IM Carissa Yip won 2026 Tata Steel Chess India Women’s Blitz in playoffs against IM Vantika Agrawal with a score of 1.5-0.5. Both Yip and Agrawal finished the double round-robin with 10.5 points, and IM Stavroula Tsolakidou finished in third with 10/18.
Open Blitz: Sixth Time’s The Charm
So finished a full point ahead of the field, losing just two games across the 18 rounds.
Final Open Blitz Standings After 18 Rounds
With the exception of 2021 and 2023, So has played in every edition of Tata Steel Chess India since it began in 2018. But until this year, he had never won a title in either the Rapid or the Blitz. He told Chess.com’s IM Rakesh Kulkarni that it was a “great start to the year” and that “I think in general I play very decently in India.”
Owing to his performance on the previous day, So started under great circumstances. He was in the sole lead, a half-point ahead of Arjun, who himself was a point ahead of Nihal. It was a matter of following up on a job well done in the final nine rounds, and So’s wins against GMs Vidit Gujrathi and Volodar Murzin, in the first two rounds of the day, fit the bill.
Time was a critical factor in the rook endgame where Vidit had just eight seconds against 29. 40…g3? was a mistake that gave Black some advantage, but within a few moves So lopped an entire rook off the board.
So then outplayed Murzin in the middlegame but lost control and allowed the position to simplify. In an equal endgame, a tactical oversight by Murzin allowed So to take a full-point lead.
Now a point ahead of Arjun, who drew GM Wei Yi and lost against Nihal, So went on to draw all but one of the remaining seven games. He escaped a briefly losing position against Wei in round 12 and even had winning positions against Nihal in round 13, Arjun in round 15, and Aravindh in round 16—but he made six draws in a row.
When GM Hans Niemann beat Arjun in round 16, So needed just a draw in round 17 to win the event with a game to spare—and that’s what happened in So’s round-17 game against Niemann. So’s smile wasn’t at all tainted by a final-round loss against GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu (who also beat Arjun in the previous round), as it had no impact on his title.
It did have a pretty ending, though, with 23…Nc2+! finishing off the stranded white king in the middle of the board.
So told Rakesh, “My goal next time would be to win the Rapid, obviously.” As to where fans will see him next, he said he had “no idea” and commented on the evolving chess landscape:
The chess world is changing exponentially. It seems like time controls are getting faster and faster, also there are a lot of online tournaments, online qualifiers, so probably fans will see me in Titled Tuesday or something. But so far my calendar is still very empty.
Women’s Blitz: Vantika Wins 4 In A Row, Yip Secures The Title
Vantika’s four-game winning streak at the end to catch up to Yip was the story of the double round-robin.
Women’s Final Blitz Standings After Round 18
Like So, Yip started the day already with a half-point lead over Tsolakidou. But Vantika, a point behind, had a much bigger hill to climb, especially as she lost three of her first four games on day two.
By the end of round 14, Yip had a full-point lead over the field, even despite losing her first game against Harika, and Vantika was two points behind. The streak started with a win against the leader in round 15. Vantika was in big trouble for a large part of the middlegame, but in the endgame her bishop proved to be stronger than the knight.
Vantika went on to beat Tsolakidou, WGM Rakshitta Ravi, and finally GM Kateryna Lagno. That last game was a thriller as Lagno set up an unstoppable checkmate, but one wrong king move—33…Kxb2??, played in three seconds when she had 22—meant that Vantika won and we were treated to playoffs.
Yip, on the other hand, won two games, drew five, and lost two. After defeating GM Aleksandra Goryachkina—who was briefly in the lead—in the penultimate round, Yip would have avoided tiebreaks entirely if she beat GM Divya Deshmukh in the final round. She was winning for a few moves, but Divya gave a perpetual check at the end.
Tsolakidou even snatched third from Goryachkina in the last round by inflicting a second consecutive loss. The Greek IM drew three games and lost three, but finished strong with three wins at the end—her very last two games came against the top-two seeds.
Yip 1.5-0.5 Vantika
Yip won game one with the black pieces and then secured a draw with White in game two to claim the title.
GM Rafael Leitao analyzes the Game of the Day, which Yip won on the black side of a Modern Defense. It was a surprisingly smooth win, helped much by the fact that, after a few long thinks, by move 20 Vantika was down to 53 seconds against two minutes and 29.
Yip got the job done by successfully defending a worse bishop vs. good knight endgame with equal pawns. Vantika was winning for precisely one move the entire game, which lasted 120 moves—eight moves longer than an incorrect draw claim made by Yip on move 112.
That concludes our coverage of Tata Steel Chess India this year, and we congratulate the winners! Nihal and Lagno earned the Rapid titles, while So and Carissa came away with the Blitz.
Tata Steel Chess India 2026 took place January 7-11 in Kolkata, India, and featured an Open and a Women’s section, each consisting of 10 players and with the same prize fund. The first three days of rapid chess (first prize $10,000) were a single round-robin with 15 minutes plus a 10-second increment/move time control. The last two days of blitz (first prize $7,500) were a double round-robin at a 3+2 time control.
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