GM Wesley So continues to lead after round four of the 2026 Sinquefield Cup on Thursday. There was one decisive game, where GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu gave GM Jorden van Foreest his third loss. Praggnanandhaa is now half a point behind the leader, as are GMs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Levon Aronian (who drew GMs Vincent Keymer and So himself). We saw two other draws in GM Anish Giri vs. GM Javokhir Sindarov and GM Sam Sevian vs. GM Fabiano Caruana.
In the 2026 Cairns Cup round four, we saw three decisive games, and it could have been four. GM Tan Zhongyi leads by a full point after beating GM Vaishali Rameshbabu. There are four players behind her: GM Bibisara Assaubayeva (who gave GM Alexandra Kosteniuk her fourth loss), GM Divya Deshmukh (who saved a lost knight endgame vs. IM Carissa Yip), and IM Alice Lee, who lost to the fourth player in the tie, IM Stavroula Tsolakidou. The one draw was GM Humpy Koneru vs. GM Anna Muzychuk.
Round five of both tournaments is on Friday, August 14, starting at 1 p.m. ET / 19:00 CEST / 10:30 p.m. IST. It is followed by a rest day on Saturday.
Except for Praggnanandhaa rising higher, the standings are unchanged from round three. So leads the tournament by a mere half-point.
Sinquefield Cup | Round 4 Standings
As if to make up for four draws in the previous round, we saw a majority of decisive games in the Cairns Cup. The Chinese grandmaster leads the event by a full point.
Cairns Cup | Round 4 Standings
Praggnanandhaa Deals More Misfortune To Van Foreest
The results have simmered a little bit since the first three rounds, where eight out of 15 games were decisive. So far, we have had decisive games in every round; two times, the majority of games were decisive. You can see a graphic below that shows the win-rate in previous years at the Sinquefield Cup.
When Praggnanandhaa offered a sacrifice on move eight, and Van Foreest grabbed the pawn, it was clear that we were going to have a fight on our hands. Praggnanandhaa said he was surprised his opponent took the pawn, and had to take time to remember what exactly White is supposed to do. “This was like one of 10 things I looked at,” he reminded the audience after the game.
Van Foreest captured twice on e4 and reached the following position. But after the most natural 10.Nc3, attacking the bishop, the Dutchman took 11 minutes to bring his bishop back to c6, a sign that perhaps he was thinking on his own.
The game blew up as, pretty soon, Black sacrificed his queen. On the plus side, Praggnanandhaa noted, “The good thing about this position is I can never be worse,” after winning the queen. He went on to convert the material advantage, even though he saw many fortress opportunities for his opponent, and he eventually showcased how to win with queen vs. rook. Asked how much time he’s spent studying such an endgame, Praggnanandhaa responded, “If I can’t win this, I shouldn’t be playing at this level!”Â
GM Rafael Leitao goes over the Game of the Day below.Â
The rest of the games were drawn. The marquee matchup was Aronian vs. So, which was a true fight (in a Berlin Defense), but the sparks simmered to a threefold repetition by move 32. Showing the following fantasy variation he calculated, which did not happen in the game, Aronian joked, “Of course I saw Na4, but it seems so ridiculous, if you think about it. And my second, GM Aryan Tari, has been telling me, ‘Don’t do stupid things like you did before!’ and I was just thinking of his face if I meet Nh5 with Na4, even if it’s the best move!”Â
My second, Aryan Tari, has been telling me, ‘Don’t do stupid things like you did before!’
—Levon Aronian
Aronian didn’t “do stupid things” and, with no mistakes from either player, it was a draw. Vachier-Lagrave played 1.d4 against Keymer, got a brief advantage at some point, but it also ended by move 35.
Giri made the first draw of the day against Sindarov, and he observed that he once again defended a pawn-down opposite-color bishop endgame. But, unlike yesterday, he didn’t lose this one. Speaking of the painful loss to Sevian in round three (“unimaginable,” in Giri’s words), he quipped, “If people would not be losing such positions, I would be out of work very quickly! I think, for the sake of chess, it’s okay that White won that game.”
If people would not be losing such positions, I would be out of work very quickly!
—Anish Giri
Sevian reached a position where he was up the exchange for a pawn, but the position never left the drawing margin for Caruana. It was the longest game of the day, but Caruana left no doubt that he’d hold the endgame.
Friday is the last round before a rest day. So will have the white pieces against round four’s winner, Praggnanandhaa, in the marquee matchup.
Round 5 Pairings
Cairns Cup Round 4: Tan Takes Sole Lead
Just as in round two of the Sinquefield Cup, we nearly saw four white wins in the Cairns Cup. Still, we saw three winners: Tan, Tsolakidou, and Assaubayeva.
The biggest miss was undoubtedly Yip’s. A long fight in the Philidor Defense transitioned to a winning advantage for White in the knight endgame. She found the winning plan, sacrificing her knight for three passed pawns, but a single wrong move, 57.Kg4?, undid all that hard work. Divya drew the game without giving Yip any hope for a win from that point.
The only other draw, Humpy vs. Muzychuk, was a 99-accuracy affair by both sides. It featured the Samisch Variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defense—the same opening Caruana lost with White in round three—but both players just followed the top line, more or less. No chances.
Assaubayeva was the first to win, against the struggling Kosteniuk. She started with the Reti Opening, and she played a pawn sacrifice that looks like the Blumenfeld Gambit with reversed colors. Kosteniuk must have mixed something up in her preparation, however, and she played a losing move as early as move 10. Assaubayeva showed just how winning the white initiative was, with 12.c5! being the key move.
One of the two co-leaders, Tan, won another game, this time against Vaishali. White played a sort of Leningrad Dutch with reversed colors, with her 8.f4 being a move played several times by Caruana (twice last year against So). In the middlegame, Vaishali offered an exchange sacrifice, but one that could not be taken. Later on, however, she sacrificed another exchange, which had to be taken, but it didn’t work at all. Vaishali resigned before making her 40th move, with Stockfish announcing a mate in nine moves.
Lee dropped out of the co-lead with the loss to Tsolakidou. The Greek international master’s offbeat play in the London System paid off. And although she missed a brilliant (not-trivial) Greek Gift sacrifice on move 16—she surely considered it—the white attack was too hard for Lee to parry anyway. 20.Nf6+! was the beginning of the end for the American IM.
On Friday, Tan has the black pieces against her former co-leader, Lee.
Round 5 Pairings
The 2026 Sinquefield Cup is the fifth and final leg of the 2026 Grand Chess Tour. Ten players competed in a classical round-robin tournament with a $475,000 prize fund and counts for qualification into the Grand Chess Tour Finals. It runs alongside the 2026 Cairns Cup, which is also a 10-player round-robin featuring some of the strongest women in the world, with a prize fund of $250,000.
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