GM Nihal Sarin won the Menorca Open Masters, scoring two wins against World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju along the way. Nihal’s 6/10 score was enough for clear first place, half a point ahead of GMs Ruslan Ponomariov and Richard Rapport. Gukesh had to settle for fourth place out of six participants with 4.5/10. Following the win in Tata Steel Chess India Rapid 2026, it’s Nihal’s second tournament victory this year.
Meanwhile, in the open tournament, GM Abhimanyu Mishra had the best tiebreaks of the four players tied for first place, scoring 7.5/9.
Masters Section
Results of the masters section.
The masters section was a six-player double round-robin rapid tournament with 30 minutes for both sides plus a 10-second increment. Nihal, who thrives in faster time controls, took first with four wins, four draws, and two losses to earn €7,000.
His 2-0 score against Gukesh put him ahead of his rivals. You’ll rarely see anyone defeat a world champion in such a dominant fashion, regardless of the time control.
Nihal played creatively in the opening of just about every game. Against GM Pentala Harikrishna, he tried the exceedingly rare Portuguese Opening. After 1.e4 e5, Nihal’s 2.Bb5 is the 12th most commonly played move in games on Chess.com, behind moves like 2.f3.
Rapport is known for his sharp and creative play and played a beautiful game to deliver one of Nihal’s only losses of the event.
Open Section
419 players competed in a nine-round Open, played at a classical time control. Mishra scored six wins and two draws, and took a bye to reach 7.5 points. He secured first on tiebreaks ahead of GMs Leon Luke Mendonca, Li Di, and Tomas Sosa.
Mishra’s eighth-round victory over GM Abdimalik Abdisalimov allowed him to make a quick draw with Mendonca in the final round to secure first place. Abdisalimov played a couple of dubious moves in the opening and Mishra never gave him a chance to recover.
Mishra is best-known as the youngest grandmaster in history. This tournament showed that his record may be under threat, as 10-year-old FM Aarit Kapil became one of the youngest players to ever score an IM norm. Another 10-year-old Indian, CM Sarbartho Mani, also impressed, surpassing 2300 and earning the FM title after gaining 135 rating points across his last two tournaments in Spain.
14-year-old CM Alisher Abdsattar had another impressive result, taking fifth place with 7/9. Unfortunately, he was ineligible for a norm, as his final two wins were secured by forfeit. Numerous players forfeited their final round games by not arriving at the board.
Chess.com contacted the organizers for comment, and received this response:
All the players who aren’t paired requested a bye for this round. There were 16 IM and GM norms achieved in the tournament. There was only one case of someone who could have scored a norm but their opponent didn’t show up; it was for personal reasons, I imagine.
