2 min readUpdated: May 6, 2026 06:49 PM IST
The highest-ranked Indian male chess player, Arjun Erigaisi, moved into the joint lead of the TePe Sigeman chess tournament after beating Dutch Grandmaster Jorden van Foreest in the fifth round on Tuesday.
Arjun caught up with the overnight leader and the youngest player in the lineup, Yaagiz Kaan Erdogmus, with both sitting on 3.5 points each with two rounds to go. The Indian pounced on a blunder by the Dutchman.
Playing with the white pieces in the Slav game against van Foreest, Arjun won the game in just 30 moves after the latter made two decisive errors in the middlegame. First, he allowed Arjun to win a pawn, and then he blundered his entire rook and resigned in a completely losing position, handing Arjun his second win of the tournament. Arjun had previously beaten Swedish GM and local player Nils Grandelius in the third round.
Erdogmus could have taken the sole lead in the event with a win but avoided a big scare against American Andy Woodward with the black pieces and eventually shared the spoils.
World No. 1 and five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen bounced back after his loss to van Foreest in the fourth round as he took down China’s Zhu Jiner in an “incredibly shaky” game.
Carlsen admitted that Jiner, the lone female player in the lineup, had outplayed him for a while in the game. He said: “It was incredibly shaky! I thought early on that I was doing alright, but I couldn’t figure it out, and then I lost the thread. I think she completely outplayed me for a while there—I didn’t like what was going on at all.”
With two more rounds left in the event, Arjun has a chance to win this event as he will play Jiner and Woodward in the final two rounds.
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TePe Sigeman 2026 leaderboard after fifth round
1. Arjun Erigaisi – 3.5 points
2. Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus – 3.5 points
3. Nodirbek Abdusattorov – 3 points
4. Magnus Carlsen – 3 points
5. Jorden van Foreest – 2.5 points
6. Andy Woodward – 2.5 points
7. Zhu Jiner – 1.5 points
8. Nils Grandelius – 0.5 points
