GM Arjun Erigaisi became the first player other than GM Alireza Firouzja to win a game in the 2026 Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters after carefully defusing an inventive queen sacrifice by GM Hans Niemann. Firouzja leads by half a point after making a draw against GM Nihal Sarin, while GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov got into trouble for a third game in a row but once again made a draw, this time against GM Pranesh M. World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju was unable to bounce back from his loss the day before, but at least made a comfortable draw against GM Dmitry Andreikin.
Round four will start on Sunday, July 19, at 5:30 a.m. ET/11:30 CEST/3 p.m. IST.
Firouzja was finally stopped, while the pattern of one win a day continued.
Arjun is now up into sole second place, half a point behind Firouzja.
Standings After Round 3
Arjun 1-0 Niemann
Arjun is the only player to have featured in all four editions of the Chennai Grand Masters, but he’s yet to win the top prize despite having tied for first place after the classical games in both 2023 and 2024 (in 2025 he was joint second, but a distant two points behind GM Vincent Keymer). The omens this year hadn’t been good in the opening rounds, since he’d missed chances, especially in a game he described as “so winning” against Abdusattorov.Â
His round-three opponent had just as much reason to lament, however, since Niemann was also beating Abdusattorov and then a piece up against Nihal before being held to a 132-move draw. Niemann could have been forgiven for trying to force an early draw, but instead we got another fantastic fight, with Arjun playing the Catalan. There was none of the cagey maneuvering we often get in that opening, with both sides missing some tricks in a fiendishly complicated middlegame before Niemann unleashed a queen sacrifice that deserves at least ‘!!’ to be added before the computer’s cold ‘?’.Â
The brilliant point is that capturing on a5, as Arjun did, is met by 27…Rxd1+ and then 28…c3, trapping the white queen. Still, White was able to emerge a pawn up and with excellent winning chances, so that 26…c3! would have been a better choice.
“Toward the end it felt a bit scary, but I think I was always winning!” said Arjun, who never gave Niemann a real chance to get back into the game.Â
That’s our Game of the Day, which GM Rafael Leitao analyzes below.
That game saw Arjun edge back above Firouzja into the world number-nine spot, but it wasn’t enough to catch the leader, since Firouzja made a draw against Nihal.
Nihal went for the London System, and the rare move 5.h3.
The move may be unusual, but it has the stamp of quality of having been played by opening expert GM Anish Giri in one of the most important chess events—round one of the 2023 FIDE Grand Swiss against GM Raunak Sadhwani.
Firouzja deviated on move nine but came under pressure, and was perhaps fortunate that Nihal went for a tactical sequence that (temporarily) won a pawn, when he could instead have maintained the tension. Firouzja, despite falling low on the clock, showed excellent nerves and calculation to hold a potentially tricky endgame that had some echoes of the endgame he’d won against Gukesh the day before.
Gukesh must have been hoping to bounce back and sprang the surprise of playing the Scotch against Andreikin.Â
Andreikin didn’t blink, however, and in fact both players had around the same time they started with when the first new move, 15…Bb4, appeared on the board. A few moves later, 19.Nxc6 by Gukesh unleashed a brief tactical flurry, but the balance wasn’t seriously disturbed and it was Andreikin who decided to play on instead of forcing a quick draw. He was unable to make any progress, but, with the game ending in bare kings, it was another disappointing day at the chessboard for the world champion.
The feeling after Abdusattorov dodged bullets with White in the first two games, against Niemann and Arjun, was that he might hit back and win with Black against underdog Pranesh. That feeling was perhaps enhanced when Abdusattorov played not the traditional Sicilian exchange sac on c3, but on c4.
It wasn’t that Black was better, but it’s hard to bet against Abdusattorov in tricky, unbalanced positions.
19-year-old Pranesh, the winner of the Challengers in 2025, continues to impress, however, and regained the initiative. Once again Abdusattorov was close to objectively lost, but once again he escaped to make a draw.
So Abdusattorov remains one of six players who are yet to score a win in Chennai this year, and in round four he faces another—Gukesh. Their clashes seldom disappoint!Â
Arjun may see this as his chance to catch Firouzja, since he has White against Pranesh while Firouzja is Black against Niemann. We’ll already have crossed the halfway mark when the round ends, so that there’s no time to spare!Â
Round 4 Pairings
How To Watch
The fourth edition of the Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters is taking place July 16-22, 2026, in Chennai, India. The event is an eight-player round-robin, with 90 minutes for all moves, plus a 30-second increment from move 1. The top prize is ₹25,00,000, which is around $26,000.Â