Nepomniachtchi Nails Down Freestyle Friday

GM Ian Nepomniachtchi won Freestyle Friday on January 16, grabbing his opportunity at a mate-in-two in the final round to take the tournament outright with 9.5 points. IM Renato Terry helped by beating the one player who had been tied with Nepomniachtchi, GM Amin Tabatabaei, in the final round. Tabatabaei still took second place on tiebreaks ahead of Terry and GM Rinat Jumabayev, who all scored 8.5 points each.

Tabatabaei and GM Alexey Sarana were the last two perfect players, each making a score of 5/5. Tabatabei had won a 109-move marathon against GM Magnus Carlsen in the fourth round.

But it was Sarana, not Tabatabei, won won in the sixth round to move to 6/6. His lead did not last, however, with Nepomniachtchi winning their matchup in round seven. Once again, no one would score 11/11 score in Freestyle Friday—which happened three times from June 6 to July 18, 2025, but has yet to recur since.

With one round to go before the last break, Sarana, Nepomniachtchi, GM Dmitry Andreikin, and Tabatabaei all co-led on six points. Of the four, only Andreikin won, delivering Sarana’s second straight defeat to take the outright tournament lead.

Still, five players trailed Andreikin just half a point behind—GM Hans Niemann, Terry, Tabatabei, IM Mahammad Muradli, and Nepomniachtchi—and the ground only continued to shift in the ninth round. Niemann took out the leader, while Nepomniachtchi and Tabatabaei also won, against Terry and Muradli, respectively.

Whereas only one of four co-leaders in the seventh round won, here in the 10th round, two co-leaders retained their position out of the three. The one who did not was Niemann, who lost to Tabatabaei to become the next erstwhile leader to fall out of first.

Normally, two players tied for first place with just one round remaining would face each other for all the marbles. Here, Nepomniachtchi and Tabatabaei had played in the eighth round, so they could not play again. That left open the possibility that both might lose, which would turn this week into the very rare occasion where 8.5 points was enough to win. On a day where every player who took the lead seemed to drop it soon after, that would have been a thematic yet still fairly surprising outcome.

Indeed, Nepomniachtchi and Tabatabaei were both worse at some point in their games against Terry and GM Denis Lazavik, respectively. First, however, Jumabayev defeated Niemann in just 20 moves. While he ultimately did not get a tie for first out of it, Jumabayev—who also, along with Tabatabaei and Muradli, won against Carlsen this week—still got some cash in the end.

Of the other two key games, Lazavik–Nepomniachtchi was the first to end. What looked like it might become a dead draw suddenly turned interesting when Lazavik got a far-advanced passed h-pawn. Suddenly, however, trying to get his knight over to the kingside, Lazavik blundered the mate-in-two.

The chances at an 8.5-point winner over, Tabatabaei now needed win to retain the tie with Nepomniachtchi. Like Nepomniachtchi, Tabatabaei’s opponent got a passed pawn one square away from promotion. Unlike Lazavik had been, however, Terry was able to threaten promotion decisively in his favor.

With tiebreaks coming down to opponent strength, not head-to-head, Tabatabaei still finished in second place ahead of Terry and Jumabayev. In fact, Tabatabaei’s tiebreaks came out ahead of Nepomniachtchi, but that much did not matter.

The women’s prize went to IM Anna Sargsyan for the second straight week.

January 16 Freestyle Friday | Final Standings (Top 25)