Even by ending the day with three losses, GM Hans Niemann leads the 2026 Super Rapid & Blitz Poland after the first nine rounds of blitz. GM Wesley So wasn’t able to catch up as he lost two out of the last four games himself, making draws in the other two. GMs Fabiano Caruana and Vladimir Fedoseev, on the other hand, made progress to land a point and a half behind the leader.
Day five, featuring the final blitz rounds 10-18, starts two hours earlier. That’s on Saturday, May 9, at 6 a.m. ET / 12:00 CEST / 3:30 p.m. IST.
Niemann is still in the lead, but only by half a point over So.
Super Rapid & Blitz Poland Standings After Day 4
If looking at the blitz portion alone and ignoring the rapid, GM Alireza Firouzja looks like the day’s winner. The only problem is that, with a disastrous rapid portion, he started the day seven points behind the leader. Even theoretically winning all nine blitz games would not have been enough to catch up to an even score.
Standings For Blitz Only After 9 Rounds
If there’s one player who, after a terrible day, can beat the leader and the world champion back to back, it’s Alireza. He defeated Niemann in game one with just one pawn left and a draw looking like the most likely outcome—well, probably in a rapid or classical game. In blitz mode, Niemann didn’t even get to defend the rook and bishop vs. rook endgame.
Alireza takes down the tournament leader in the day’s first game, just as it looked like Hans might escape!https://t.co/14xHwrYbQq#GrandChessTour pic.twitter.com/pf1hpqxuih
— chess24 (@chess24com) May 8, 2026
Firouzja went on to also beat GM Gukesh Dommaraju in round two, GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek in round four, So in round seven, and GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in round nine. The game against So was a 26-game miniature where White played a little too greedy, leaving his king in the center to grab an exchange. When the white king did finally castle, after a number of concessions, it was already too late.
Even with all that, Firouzja is hardly in contention to win the event. But he can still play for Grand Chess Tour points and overall prize money.
The true winner of the day is Caruana, who scored a half-point less than Firouzja and does have an outside shot of winning the event. He told GM Cristian Chirila that, with the exception of GM Magnus Carlsen, leading players “rarely run away with it” in blitz. And he later added, “I’m happy I’m at least in striking distance.”
I’m happy I’m at least in striking distance.
—Fabiano Caruana
He started the day four points behind the leader but scored wins against GM Javokhir Sindarov in round two, Vachier-Lagrave in round three, Gukesh in round five, GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda in round six, and finally Firouzja in round eight. He lost two games and made only two draws.
The first loss was “a very costly game” in his words, where he outplayed Niemann but totally lost his bearings in the time scramble. Up an exchange for a pawn—perhaps still with chances to press—Caruana lost on time.
An exchange up for a pawn, Fabiano Caruana loses on time and Hans Niemann is back in the lead!https://t.co/MF9rrAsEVw#GrandChessTour pic.twitter.com/buPg2C1H1W
— chess24 (@chess24com) May 8, 2026
As for his wins, Caruana received probably the biggest gift of the day from Sindarov: a mate-in-two in an otherwise defensible rook endgame. In the following position, White played 56.Rc4?? Ra1+ and resigned, but starting with 56.Rd3+ to push the king back would have kept the balance.
Caruana said that his wins against Firouzja, Gukesh, and Vachier-Lagrave were “quite good games.” The last win, against Firouzja, featured an exchange sacrifice to leave White with a bad bishop against two superb knights. 36…c4!! was the finishing pawn sacrifice, the nail in the coffin, that brought the second knight decisively into the game.
Wojtaszek, who was rated 2750 less than a decade ago but is the lowest-rated player in this field, had the third-best performance in the blitz alone. He scored 5/9, winning games against Gukesh in the very first round, Fedoseev in the fifth, Caruana in the seventh, and Niemann in the ninth. He could have added one more win against So in round six, but hung a full knight—and his position was so good that he still drew with a perpetual check.
Having beaten Gukesh already once in the rapid portion, he is 2/2 against the world champion in this event. Gukesh played the Benoni Defense, which happens to be the same opening Carlsen played on Thursday to win the 2026 TePe Sigeman Chess Tournament. Was he inspired?
This outing for the Benoni wasn’t as successful; the Polish GM built up a space advantage, let go of it briefly much later, but ultimately won the game again with a pawn breakthrough. GM Rafael Leitao analyzes the Game of the Day below.
“If we could exclude the first day… then you can say that I am playing pretty good here!” quipped Wojtaszek, who despite his good run in blitz is still in last place. He added that the large number of fans in Warsaw is new for him; even when he hit a 2750 rating, he said, “back then there were simply no events like that.”
If we could exclude the first day… then you can say that I am playing pretty good here!
—Radoslaw Wojtaszek
For all three players who started the day at the top of the standings—Niemann, So, and Fedoseev—the blitz portion was less than ideal. Niemann scored 3.5/9, in last place with Duda, and the other two scored just a half-point more.
Niemann said, “I recovered very well, but then losing three games in a row is a bit unnecessary!” He faulted his ambitious play, saying that he took too much risk in some games. But he also thanked So for having a similarly rough day, leaving him still as the leader.
“Losing three games in a row is a bit unnecessary!… I think I was just a bit too ambitious in some games.”
“I have to thank Wesley for just matching my losses.”
– Hans Niemann#GrandChessTour pic.twitter.com/8knGPRcsD1
— chess24 (@chess24com) May 8, 2026
Niemann, importantly, did beat two of the players chasing him: Fedoseev in round two and Caruana in round four (on time). He explained, “Those direct encounters are always very important because as long as you don’t lose to the person whose chasing you, then they sort of have to catch you step by step.”
His win against Fedoseev came right after losing the first round against Firouzja. 25.e5! was a clean crusher, with Black losing a piece by force.
He did not, however, beat his closest competitor, So. For the first and only time in the day, So managed to catch Niemann in the lead after winning their direct encounter. 16…g5? followed by 17…c5? was an unfortunate execution of the correct plan, when the immediate 16…c5! would have worked.
Niemann went on to beat Caruana and Vachier-Lagrave back to back, draw Sindarov, and finally lose all three of his last games—against Gukesh, Duda, and Wojtaszek. Still, he remains in first place.
After that win against Niemann, So lost against Gukesh in the next game. In this case, again, the attempt to play a pawn break quickly backfired, and backfired quickly! Gukesh also scored 4/9 in the blitz but picked up wins against both So and Niemann along the way.
So kept pace with the leader but couldn’t quite meet or surpass him. Every time Niemann faltered, so did So. Especially in rounds seven and eight, against Firouzja and Fedoseev, just not losing would have been enough to catch the lead.
With some critical wins, Fedoseev is still in the mix, on the same 15 points as Caruana. This despite landing himself in a losing position against Vachier-Lagrave by move 11 in round one. Like Firouzja, Vachier-Lagrave had a good performance in the blitz (4.5/9) but not enough to escape the bottom half of the scoreboard.
Fedoseev lost again in round two, but then stopped the bleeding with a draw against Gukesh. In the remaining rounds, he would score two wins—against Duda in round four and So in round seven—three draws, and one more loss against Wojtaszek. The win against Duda came as a shock; a queen trade would have been equal, but after 49.Qe3?? Duda resigned even without waiting for his opponent’s move.
Although it won’t have an impact on the podium, Sindarov and Gukesh had a second clash in the event, and the Uzbek GM got revenge for his loss in rapid. 15.Qe7?? was a one-move blunder that allowed Sindarov to win a clean pawn and, with it, the game.
They’ll have one more clash on day two of blitz, with colors reversed. As for the tournament, Gukesh is 3.5 points behind the leader and Sindarov, 1.5 points further back, is second to last place in the event.
Niemann will face the challenge of a rejuvenated Firouzja. Even if Firouzja doesn’t win the event, he’s shown on Friday that he’s a dangerous adversary in this time control. The day starts two hours earlier to account for the very real possibility of tiebreaks!
The 2026 Super Rapid & Blitz Poland is the first event on the 2026 Grand Chess Tour and runs May 5-9 in the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland. The 10 players first compete in a single rapid round-robin with a time control of 25 minutes plus a 10-second increment per move, followed by a blitz double round-robin with a 5+2 time control. The event has a $200,000 total prize fund.
Previous coverage:
