Nodirbek Abdusattorov is a formidable chess player and I am always amazed my his resilience to always fight for the win with all he got. Last year, I wrote about his winning the London Chess Classics and as if this was not enough, he has opened the year with win at Tata Steel Tournament in Wijk Aan.
Tata steel tournament is considered to be one of the strongest chess tournament for elite players and a other kinds of player in different categories. This category happens to be the masters section where Nodirbek prevailed with an impressive 9 points out of 13 rounds, in a field that had at 4 top chess players in the top 10 section and the current chess world champion.
In a chess tournament often regarded as the Wimbledon of chess, it kicked off on the 16th of January 2025 with a total of 14 players participating in the masters category, namely:
- Vincent Keymer from Germany
- Arjun Erigaisi from India
- Anish Giri from Netherlands
- Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa from India
- Dommaraju Gukesh from India
- Nodirbek Abdusattorov from Uzbekistan
- Javokhir Sindarov from Uzbekistan
- Hans Niemann from United States
- Vladimir Fedoseev from Slovenia
- Jorden van Foreest from Netherlands
- Aravindh Chithambaram from India
- Matthias Bluebaum from Germany
- Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus from Turkey
- GM Thai Dai Van Nguyen from Czech Republic
Since it was a total of 14 players, it became 13 round robin event where every player gets to play everyone. This did not serve as an opposition to the Uzbek chess prodigy given that he is a super grandmaster and he should be used to event with this kind of tournament setting of a round robin. Although it can be quite difficult especially when the player is having a bad tournament, in the sense that it can be difficult to come back in events like this. A single loss can even be a deciding factor in who the winner and who was close enough. Also in event like this you should expect quite a number of draws but that wasn't the case for this year's Tata Steel Tournament. There were lots of games that were decisive and Nordirbek was the player to benefit the most for his decisive games start with his impressive win against the new debut player Thai Dai Van Nguyen.
At the middle of the event Nordirbek had position himself a contender for the title as winner of the tournament but he still had some close competition from another Uzbek star who won the 2025 Chess World Cup, Javokhir Sindarov. Tell me something about this, chess must really be in the air over there at Uzbekistan. Then other contenders included Hans Niemann, Keymer Vincent, Jorden van Foreest.
The deciding factor came in the 12th round when the chase for the title as 2026 Tata Steel Champion rested on the shoulder of two Uzbekistan friends, Javokhir Sindarov and Nordirbek Abdusattorov. Unfortunately Sindarov's game against the Indian prodigy Praggnanandhaa ended in a draw, while Nordirbek was able to defeated Matthias Bluebaum. This gave Nordirbek the lead but it was not enough, a draw in the last game could put in a tie for first place against his friend Sindarov. So he did what he knows how to do well, and that is play good chess. He defeated Arjun in the last round to seal the deal and Sindarov brought down the tournament debut player Thai Dai Van Nguyen to finish with 8.5 points, only a half point away from the tournament winner, Nordirbek.
What an impressive play from everyone. It takes gut and a lot of hard work to play at this level.
I am @samostically, a chess player and writer. I love to share the experience I have gained from different battles over the 64 squares and the knowledgeable insights from books I have read. But most importantly, I am a Midnight Owl and I founded the community Midnight Letters.
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