It was a dream day for the Dutch as GM Jorden van Foreest brilliantly defeated GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac, while a slip on move 68 by GM Alireza Firouzja saw GM Anish Giri join his compatriot in the lead. The five-way tie for first in the Super Chess Classic Romania 2026 includes GMs Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and Vincent Keymer, who played to bare kings on move 64, and GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who made a 15-move draw against GM Javokhir Sindarov. The all-U.S. clash between GMs Wesley So and Fabiano Caruana stretched longer, but never fully sparked into life.Â
Round four is on Sunday May 17, starting at 9:10 a.m. ET / 15:10 CEST / 6:40 p.m. IST.
At times a slow third round looked destined to end in five draws, but the Dutch duo both found ways to win.
Round 3 Results
That makes it a five-way tie for the lead, with Caruana and So only a half-point behind.
Standings After Round 3
The question of how world championship challenger Sindarov would react to his first loss in 54 games was answered when he took a draw by repetition on move 15 against Vachier-Lagrave.
There was nothing of note in the game, with Sindarov saying afterward that he’d simply decided to play solidly after his misadventures the day before. He explained he’d picked the wrong player to try the hyper-sharp line in that game against: “Maybe the line works here against anyone except Pragg!”
Sindarov said he hadn’t had much chance to prepare for the two Grand Chess Tour events he’s playing, and summed up with, “I spent a lot of energy in the Candidates and maybe I need a little rest.”
I spent a lot of energy in the Candidates and maybe I need a little rest.
—Javokhir Sindarov
The remaining two draws were much longer, though neither saw a player gain clear winning chances.
Wesley So lamented of Caruana: “It’s just insane to me how he does it, how he plays all openings and how he remembers his analysis… 13…Be6—The last time I saw this move before was maybe 20 years ago, in some Sveshnikov opening book.”
It’s just insane to me how he does it, how he plays all openings and how he remembers his analysis!
—Wesley So on Fabiano Caruana
Caruana played the move with five minutes more on his clock than he’d started the game with, and didn’t use any time until move 19, when he had over 45 minutes more time on the clock than his opponent. From there the game relatively smoothly ended in a draw, though So perhaps missed a small chance to press for more.
As for the 13…Be6 move: it had been played recently in two somewhat notable games. GM Aryan Tari played it and made a draw against 12-year-old IM Sergey Sklokin in this year’s Reykjavik Open in late March, while less than a month later GM Denis Wagner played it in Berlin against IM Bennet Hagner. That game came in the key match of the German League, which featured two of the players in Bucharest as well as GM Viswanathan Anand and rising star GM Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus. Â
The last draw stretched to move 64, with both players approaching 99 percent accuracy, even if it was Praggnanandhaa with White who was pressing against Keymer in the day’s one clash of leaders.
Again it was an interesting opening, with 7.e3 an old and modest move in the Nimzo-India that was notably played by GM Anatoly Karpov against his great rival GM Garry Kasparov in the 1988 USSR Championship (a 30-move draw). The more relevant game, however, was GM Irina Krush’s spectacular win over IM Lu Miaoyi in last year’s FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss. Keymer improved on that game on move 14.
That brings us to the day’s two decisive games, that both went the way of Dutch stars.
Deac 0-1 Van ForeestÂ
“Of course Bodgan is a super-strong player, but he did lose yesterday,” said Van Foreest of his approach to this game. He wouldn’t have been dissatisfied with a draw with Black, but also knew he could target his opponent’s clock handling:
He makes a lot of good moves, but he’s usually a little bit slow, and I thought if I get a game from move one it’s good because usually he will spend a lot of time and we can get a big battle where he might be in time pressure—and that’s kind of what happened!
He makes a lot of good moves, but he’s usually a little bit slow.
—Jorden van Foreest on Bogdan-Daniel Deac
The game developed into a King’s Indian, by an unusual move order, and Van Foreest said he got “a dream version for Black,” though, despite Deac getting down to a minute by move 27, the evaluation kept swinging slightly in White or Black’s favor until 35.Kf2? was suddenly a game-losing mistake.
Van Foreest found 35…Bc4!, preparing for the queen to come to g7 with tempo, and from there it was mainly an attacking masterclass until the end—even if Deac put up some fantastic resistance.
“Today is really a great game and I’m really happy also to get a win in this tournament, especially with the black pieces,” said Van Foreest. That looked set to be the day’s only win, but there was a late swing in favor of the Dutch number-one.
Giri 1-0 Firouzja
This game had everything: a sharp and complex opening, an exchange sacrifice (blunder?), incredibly tenacious defense until it became a game for three results, then a spectacular late twist just when a draw seemed inevitable. As Giri expressed afterward to GM Cristian Chirila:
I’m very, very lucky, of course. What they say about draws escaping the jaws… or whatever. Some draw escaped today, for sure!
—Anish Giri on his win over Alireza Firouzja
The win was snatched from the jaws of a draw only after Firouzja missed a chance to force a drawn endgame with 65…Bxf2! but still had a draw in hand after playing that sacrifice a move later. Soon, however, 68…Be1? lost instantly in a position where there were various ways to hold, including playing 68…h1=Q+! to distract the white king and gain the f3-square for its black counterpart.
After the move in the game, however, 69.Rc4+! and then pushing the b-pawn was decisive, since the king had to lose a tempo going to e3 first, instead of f3.
That’s our Game of the Day, which GM Rafael Leitao has analyzed below.
It was a bitter way for Firouzja to lose a second game in a row, and knocked him out of the top-ten on the live rating list, while Giri climbed above Sindarov to world number-five.
Giri kept a straight face at the end of his interview as he apologized for previously not playing on in a somewhat better position against Vachier-Lagrave in round one: “I would like to apologize first of all to my fans, and the sponsors, and everybody involved for the draw I made in a better position. I feel very bad about it, so I was called out on it, and justly so, so I’d like to apologize for that, but OK, today was lucky!”
With so many leaders, it’s no surprise we get two clashes between them in Sunday’s round four, in Van Foreest vs. Praggnanandhaa and Keymer vs. Vachier-Lagrave. The other leader, Giri, is Black vs. Sindarov, while the players who’ve lost two games in a row also have Black, with Deac facing So, while Firouzja is up against Caruana.Â
Round 4 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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