All games were drawn as the Super Chess Classic Romania 2026 began in Bucharest on Thursday. It wasn’t for a lack of fighting spirit, with GM Alireza Firouzja spoiling a decisive advantage against GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, while GMs Wesley So and Vincent Keymer traded blows in a wild clash. GM Anish Giri let a chance to torture GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave slip away, and GM Jorden van Foreest reluctantly had to sacrifice a pawn against GM Fabiano Caruana. Only world championship challenger GM Javokhir Sindarov made a quiet draw, after GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac chose the most solid line against the King’s Indian Defense.Â
Round two is on Friday May 15, starting at 9:10 a.m. ET / 15:10 CEST / 6:40 p.m. IST.
On the surface it was a peaceful start in Romania, but four of the games could easily have ended decisively.
Round 1 Results
That means there’s literally nothing to separate the players after the first round.
Standings After Round 1
Less than a week after the Super Rapid & Blitz Poland in Warsaw, we move to Bucharest, Romania for the second event of the 2026 Grand Chess Tour. It’s also the first of two classical events—the other is the Sinquefield Cup—before the GCT Finals.Â
The nine tour regulars all play, including five players who competed in Poland. GM Hans Niemann was the winner there, but he isn’t a full tour participant, so that the early leader is Caruana, a two-time winner in Romania, who finished second in Poland after winning the blitz section in style.
Caruana is followed by So, a three-time runner-up in Romania, who was third in Poland, as well as Firouzja, Sindarov, and Vachier-Lagrave.
Four players begin their tour with this event, world number-six Giri, then two players competing as full Tour participants for the first time: world number-seven Keymer and Van Foreest, who plays as a late replacement for GM Levon Aronian, who pulled out for health reasons. The field is completed by Deac, who for the sixth edition of the tournament plays as the local wildcard. Â
The time control is 90 minutes for 40 moves, plus another 30 minutes, with a 30-second increment starting on move one. The tournament is a 10-player single round-robin held in a new venue this year, the Museum of the National Bank of Romania.
The basic prize fund is the same $350,000, with $100,000 for first place, but this year is topped up by a $125,000 bonus that will be split among the players on the basis of how many wins they score. There are also Grand Chess Tour points counting toward the race to finish in the top-four and play the GCT Finals in St. Louis later this year.Â
No win bonuses were earned in round one.
Deac ½-½ Sindarov
Sindarov began his first season as a full Grand Chess Tour participant with a fascinating duel in Warsaw against the player he’ll face in a world championship match later this year—and also the player he replaced on the tour—GM Gukesh Dommaraju. The world champion won with a fist pump in rapid chess, but then lost two blitz games, so that the overall score in tournament points was 2-2.
We don’t have that storyline in Bucharest, since Gukesh doesn’t play, but much of the focus will be on Sindarov, who returns to classical chess after crushing the field in the FIDE Candidates Tournament. He revealed it’s his first time in Romania, and also his first time meeting the legendary GM Garry Kasparov, who made Sindarov’s ceremonial first move against Deac. The 13th world champion compared Sindarov to two other champions, GMs Boris Spassky and Anatoly Karpov.
Kasparov says Sindarov’s style is like Spassky’s in the mid-60s: “Fast, intuitively finding the right spots for pieces, but also with dynamism. Karpov was more on the positional side. His style is more universal, but unlike Spassky he has excellent opening preparation!” pic.twitter.com/4BayFkmeA6
— chess24 (@chess24com) May 14, 2026
The point about openings was backed up when Sindarov went for the perhaps the most famous fighting opening with Black, the King’s Indian Defense.
Alas, in a twist very well known to Kasparov, Deac decided not to take on the challenge of grabbing space and playing for a win, but exchanged on e5 and traded queens. From there on the game never looked likely to end in anything but a draw, which was what happened with a three-fold repetition ending on move 33—no draw offers are allowed at any time.
The next game to finish ended abruptly just when it seemed to be heating up.
Vachier-Lagrave ½-½ Giri
“I’ve come full circle—I’ve played better moves than 10…h6 and now I’m back to bad moves again!” said Giri about his rare line against the Catalan, but it worked perfectly when Vachier-Lagrave later decided not to grab a pawn. Giri took over, but hadn’t seen that, according to the computer, he let the advantage slip in one move.
26.Nxb5!! was the amazing resource, sacrificing the knight for two, and ideally three, pawns. Giri commented when shown the silicon 0.00 eval: “It’s funny it’s zeros nowadays. I understand it’s a draw, probably, but zeros is a brutal truth, brutal eval!”
It’s funny it’s zeros nowadays. I understand it’s a draw, probably, but zeros is a brutal truth, brutal eval!
—Anish Giri
It was just the kind of sacrificial move Vachier-Lagrave loves, but he missed the chance, going for 26.Rac1? instead, and the commentators were predicting long torture for White. Instead, however, just two moves later Giri was hit by a surprise, admitted he was “completely disheartened,” and made an instant draw, even though he could have played on in the final position. He explained:
If I knew I was better, I’d have still played on. I’m not that bad… I mean, I’m not that bad in terms of mentality, I’m pretty bad at chess!
The other Dutch star also played an interesting opening and saw his game fizzle out.
Van Foreest ½-½ Caruana
Van Foreest described it as “a huge opportunity” to play as a full participant on the Grand Chess Tour, and he had a baptism of fire, facing Caruana, the top seed and two-time champion in Romania, in the first game. The Dutchman had come into the event after a mixed tournament in Malmo, but winning a classical game against GM Magnus Carlsen will balance out most disappointments.
Garry Kasparov about Jorden Van Foreest: “How many players beat Magnus recently? And it was a very decent win. The fact that this guy could beat Magnus, that gives an indication. And Magnus won that tournament. He is not here by accident. He is doing well.”#grandchesstour… pic.twitter.com/09Tr4zXi6j
— Grand Chess Tour (@GrandChessTour) May 14, 2026
Van Foreest said of the opening against Caruana, “Maybe we were surprising each other a little bit, but I think he surprised me more than I surprised him,” later adding, “Maybe I was a bit over-optimistic there and maybe a bit naive on my part to think that I would get such a seemingly good position out of the opening.”
Caruana revealed after the game that he knew something about the line that occurred, and it seemed set to go toward a quick draw until 21.Ne4?! ran into 21…f5!.
Van Foreest admitted his original plan had been to retreat the knight, but he gradually realized that would end in disaster, with …f4 following and a crushing kingside attack.Â
The reason Van Foreest has risen to world number-16, however, seems to be a greater maturity, which has made him very hard to beat. He explained his conclusion at the board: “21.Ne4 is definitely a bad move and I made a mistake, but I have to admit that I made a mistake, go 22.Nc5 and defend this position down a pawn.”
That’s just what he did, and in fact Caruana barely managed to apply any pressure.
“I think he definitely didn’t find the way to put the maximum pressure there and I kind of escaped,” is how Van Foreest summed up the game.
The last two games, meanwhile, saw blood almost spilled, and stretched to five hours of play.
So ½-½ Keymer
This was the most fun game of the day, with Keymer commenting, “Definitely was a crazy game—a full fight right from the start!”
Definitely was a crazy game—a full fight right from the start!Â
—Vincent Keymer on his draw vs. Wesley So
Keymer had the better of the opening, but admitted to losing his way when he played 12…Bc5?! instead of 12…Bh4!. The reason he hadn’t gone for the second option was 13.g3?, but it turns out that would run into a brilliant sacrifice on f2.
“This I just didn’t see,” said Keymer, though he added that it’s the kind of position that’s easier to play if you know the engine evaluation is +2 in Black’s favor.
Things soon got out of control, with So correctly sacrificing an exchange and Keymer correctly assessing that he needed to reject that and counterattack with a g-pawn lunge.
The complexity of the position was matched by a lack of time, with Keymer noting: “Normally you would call this a critical position and you would have to spend 20-30 minutes to figure it out, but I had 14 minutes and still 23 moves to make, which is not that great!”
Despite time trouble, however, Keymer would later correctly sacrifice a bishop on h3 for an attack on the white king, hold things together in nail-biting time trouble, and then go on to make a draw in an endgame which he felt was “surprisingly close” to a win for Black, even if the engine once again shows its zeros everywhere.Â
That’s our Game of the Day, which GM Rafael Leitao describes as “a delightful game, exquisitely played by both players” in his analysis below.
That leaves one game, which was perhaps the closest to providing a winner.
Praggnanandhaa ½-½ Firouzja
Praggnanandhaa won the 2025 edition of the Super Chess Classic without losing a game, overcoming Firouzja and Vachier-Lagrave in a playoff. This time, however, he was on the brink of losing in round one, despite springing the first surprise in the opening.
In the end, however, everything came down to the move 35…Rbd8?, which allowed Praggnanandhaa to swap off queens with 36.Qe3! and enter a rook ending which turned out to be drawn.
The game stretched on all the way until bare queens, but Firouzja never got a second chance.
That means no one is playing catch-up or trying to preserve their lead in round two, which includes such treats as Caruana-Giri, Sindarov-Praggnanandhaa (can Pragg get revenge for being the only player Sindarov beat twice at the Candidates?), and the all-French clash, Firouzja-Vachier-Lagrave.
Round 2 Pairings
How to watch?
The 2026 Super Chess Classic Romania is the second event on the 2026 Grand Chess Tour and runs from May 13 to 23 at the Museum of the National Bank of Romania in Bucharest. It’s a 10-player round-robin with a time control of 90 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 30 more minutes for the rest of the game, plus a 30-second increment starting on move one. The prize fund is $475,000.
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