6/25/2024 – Although the selection of three Indian players in this year’s FIDE Candidates Tournament was a significant event in itself, there was a certain sadness in everyone's hearts as Arjun Erigaisi, despite coming close to qualifying multiple times, could not secure a spot. In an exclusive interview with ChessBase India Hindi’s Niklesh Jain, Arjun discussed missing out on the FIDE Candidates, his future goals, recent performances, and upcoming tournaments.

6/18/2024 – Arjun Erigaisi continues to impress: after a strong performance at the French Team Championships, he won the Stepan Avagyan Memorial in Jermuk, Armenia, with 6.0/9, finishing 1.5 points ahead of his closest rivals. With a live rating of 2778.1, he is now ranked 4th in the world. | Photos: Chess Academy Armenia

6/17/2024 – The Stepan Avagyan Memorial is taking place in Jermuk, Armenia on June 10-18. A 10-player single round-robin, the tournament includes five Armenian representatives and five international grandmasters. Top seed Arjun Erigaisi is the sole leader with two rounds to go, as he stands a full point ahead of a three-player chasing pack consisting of Amin Tabatabaei, Sam Sevian and Bogdan-Daniel Deac. | Photos: Chess Academy of Armenia

6/6/2024 – The World Chess Federation has introduced a new qualification route for the Candidates Tournament in the form of the FIDE Circuit. The best player of the Circuit will play in the next Candidates Tournament. Arjun Erigaisi is currently at the top of the list. His victory at the Sharjah Masters allowed him to leapfrog Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who had previously been in the lead.

4/30/2024 – Arjun Erigaisi inflicted a third consecutive loss on Marc’Andria Maurizzi to join Vincent Keymer and Anton Korobov in the lead of the TePe Sigeman & Co. Tournament in Malmö. All three remaining games ended drawn, including the clash of co-leaders between Keymer and Korobov. | Photo: Mikael Svensson, tepesigemanchess.com

4/9/2024 – Sunday saw the end of the excellently organized Open Tournament in Menorca. In the final spurt, Arjun Erigaisi secured tournament victory thanks to his superior tiebreak score. With this triumph, Arjun climbed to number seven in the live ratings list. Kirill Alekseenko and Maksim Chigaev grabbed second and third place, respectively. | Photos: ChessBase India, Menorca Open

3/9/2024 – Bu Xiangzhi, Yu Yangyi and Arjun Erigaisi finished the fifth edition of the Shenzhen Masters tied for first place with 4½/7 points each. The first tiebreak criterion was the number of points collected in their direct encounters, and it was Bu who had the best score, as he had defeated Arjun in the second round. Thus, Bu got the first prize, Yu finished second and Arjun finished third. | Photos: Liang Ziming / Chinese Chess Federation

12/21/2023 – D Gukesh drew his final-round game against Pentala Harikrishna. Arjun Erigaisi defeated Sanan Sjugirov. Both Gukesh and Arjun ended up with the same 4½/7 score. Gukesh won the Chennai Masters on tie-breaks, Arjun was placed second. Pavel Eljanov drew against Levon Aronian. Thus, Harikrishna and Eljanov finished with 4/7 each. Harikrishna secured third place. The objective of organizing this event was certainly a huge success. The top three places were claimed by Indian players. This triumph has moved Gukesh ahead of Anish Giri in the FIDE Circuit leaderboard. Sai Akhil Anand designed and helped with the 'Draw of Lots' in the opening ceremony and the closing ceremony was graced by the one and only Vishy Anand. It goes without saying that the tournament brought a lot of Anand (meaning joy) to all. | Photos: Shahid Ahmed

12/20/2023 – Arjun Erigaisi scored the sole victory in the penultimate round of the Chennai Grand Masters. It started a little wild compared to other games. His opponent, Parham Maghsoodloo, decided to sacrifice his bishop to get a couple of pawns and exploit Arjun's weakened king. However, there was not enough compensation and White could not generate a substantial attack. The other games had a relatively calm draw between Gukesh and Eljanov, Aronian and Predke, and Sjugirov and Harikrishna. Harikrishna can spoil Gukesh's tournament if he manages to beat the teenager. The final round stars one and a half hour earlier than usual. | Photos: Shahid Ahmed

12/19/2023 – D Gukesh scored his second win in-a-row, against Sanan Sjugirov, in the fifth round of the Chennai Grand Masters. Gukesh seized his advantage and synthesized an attack on the kingside. Sjugirov had no proper answer to it and succumbed. The Arjun Erigaisi-Levon Aronian saga continues. Arjun had a great opportunity to beat Aronian for the first time in a rated game in over two years. Unfortunately, he pushed a pawn incorrectly in the rook endgame and eventually lost his advantage. The two-time World Cup winner managed to salvage a draw. Pavel Eljanov handed Alexandr Predke his third consecutive loss. Gukesh is in the sole lead with 3½/5, followed by Pentala Harikrishna and Eljanov at 3/5 each. | Photos: Shahid Ahmed

12/17/2023 – Arjun Erigaisi scored his first win of the event against Alexandr Predke in the third round of the Chennai Grand Masters 2023. After losing the first round against Harikrishna, Arjun was virtually in a must-win situation to stay in the championship hunt and keep his chances in the FIDE Circuit. Predke made a positional mistake which allowed his opponent to force the queen exchange. Arjun made the most out of his opportunity to trail the leaders — Sanan Sjugirov and Harikrishna — by a half point at 1.5/3 along with Levon Aronian, Pavel Eljanov and D Gukesh. | Photos: Shahid Ahmed

12/14/2023 – The Chennai Grand Masters is the strongest ever classical super tournament to take place in India. The average rating of the tournament is 2711. Arjun Erigaisi and D Gukesh will be battling against Parham Maghsoodloo (IRI) for an improvement in the FIDE Circuit. They will also face Levon Aronian (USA), Sanan Sjugirov (HUN), Pentala Harikrishna, Pavel Eljanov (UKR) and Alexandr Predke (SRB). The total prize fund is ₹5000000 (US$ 60000). The top three prizes are ₹1500000 (US$ 18000), ₹1000000 (US$ 12000) and ₹800000 (US$ 12000). Round 1 starts tomorrow at 14.45 IST (10.15 CET, 4.15 ET). | Photo: Amruta Mokal

10/30/2023 – Round 5 of the FIDE Grand Swiss saw Hikaru Nakamura and Arjun Erigaisi grabbing wins to join Andrey Esipenko in the lead of the open section. Nakamura obtained his third consecutive win after starting the event with two draws. The large chasing pack, now consisting of 16 players, now includes round-5 winners Sam Shankland, Nodirbek Yakubboev and Radoslaw Wojtaszek. Meanwhile, in the women’s tournament, Bibisara Assaubayeva beat Tan Zhongyi to become the first sole leader of the event. | Photo: Anna Shtourman

10/27/2023 – After two rounds, seven players still have perfect scores in the open section of the FIDE Grand Swiss. Joining elite players Fabiano Caruana (pictured) and Arjun Erigaisi in the lead, among others, is IM Ramazan Zhalmakhanov from Kazakhstan, who stunned Bassem Amin on Thursday. In the women’s section, five players are sharing first place on 2/2. Tan Zhongyi and Anna Muzychuk are the highest-rated in this group, while, similarly to the open, a Kazakh representative gave the biggest surprise, as Meruert Kamalidenova beat Valentina Gunina to enter round 3 as one of the co-leaders. | Photo: Anna Shtourman

10/20/2023 – Round 8 of the Qatar Masters saw Arjun Erigaisi beating David Paravyan to enter Friday’s final round as the sole leader, with six players standing a half point behind. Among these six chasers are Hikaru Nakamura and Nodirbek Abdusattorov — Arjun’s rival in round 9 — who both grabbed wins on Thursday. Former co-leaders Karthikeyan Murali, Narayanan S.L., Javokhir Sindarov and Nodirbek Yakubboev still have chances to win the event as well. | Photo: Aditya Sur Roy

10/18/2023 – Four players are sharing the lead with 5/6 points at the Qatar Masters in Doha. Indian GM Narayanan S.L., the sole leader before the rest day, drew Nodirbek Abdusattorov on Tuesday, allowing Arjun Erigaisi (India), Javokhir Sindarov (Uzbekistan) and Nodirbek Yakubboev (Uzbekistan) to join the lead. Among the eight players standing at a half point distance are rating favourites Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura. In round 6, Carlsen beat Aditya Samant with the black pieces. | Photo: Aditya Sur Roy

9/6/2023 – The new ChessBase Magazine #215 offers, among other things, 36 extensively annotated games. More than half of them build the "Special" of this issue: an exclusive collection of outstanding games by Hikaru Nakamura! In addition, Anish Giri, Grigoriy Oparin, Ivan Cheparinov, Thai Dai Van Nguyen et al. provide analyses from Norway Chess 2023 and Sharjah Masters 2023. Arjun Erigaisi played a brilliancy against Vladislav Kovalev in Sharjah - you can find an abridged version of his analysis here!

8/16/2023 – Magnus Carlsen and Arjun Erigaisi both won with black to take a 1-point lead in their quarterfinal matches against Dommaraju Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa, respectively. Leinier Dominguez got winning chances but failed to find precise continuations against Fabiano Caruana, while Vidit Gujrathi and Nijat Abasov signed a 109-move draw on Tuesday. In the women’s section, Aleksandra Goryachkina defeated Tan Zhongyi, also with black. | Photo: FIDE / Stev Bonhage

7/22/2023 – Arjun Erigaisi, who came from struggling in classical chess at Biel’s Grandmaster Triathlon, was the top scorer in the tournament’s blitz section. The day’s results also saw David Navara catchin Vincent Keymer in the lead of the event’s overall standings. | Photos: Official website

5/26/2023 – The 6th Sharjah Masters was a top tournament with many young players. Before the final round, eight players shared first place. In the top encounters of the last round, only Arjun Erigaisi managed to win his game and emerged as the tournament winner. | Photos: Tournament page

5/9/2023 – Abhimanyu Mishra and Peter Svidler continue to share the lead at the TePe Sigeman & Co tournament in Malmö. With two rounds to go, Dommaraju Gukesh and Nils Grandelius are still trailing the leaders by a half point. In round 5, Jorden van Foreest’s stubbornness paid off, as he scored a win over Arjun Erigaisi after the latter blundered in a long-winded, drawn rook endgame. | Photo: David Llada

5/8/2023 – Dommaraju Gukesh kicked off the TePe Sigeman & Co tournament with back-to-back wins, but is now sharing second place with Nils Grandelius a half point behind co-leaders Peter Svidler and Abhimanyu Mishra (pictured). Gukesh drew Grandelius in round 3 and was defeated by Arjun Erigaisi in round 4. Svidler and Abhimanyu both collected wins on Saturday, over Arjun and Vincent Keymer respectively. | Photo: David Llada

4/26/2023 – Former sole leader Arjun Erigaisi faltered on the second day of blitz at the Satty Zhuldyz Rapid and Blitz tournament in Kazakhstan. The only two-time FIDE World Cup winner in history, Levon Aronian, took his chance and won the event with a round to spare. Arjun finished second with 21½/33 points and Haik Martirosyan finished third with 21/33. | Photo: Aditya Sur Roy

4/23/2023 – Arjun Erigaisi won the rapid section of the Satty Zhuldyz tournament in Astana with a 9½/11 score. The youngster kicked off the day with a win over Vladimir Kramnik. He then he drew Levon Aronian, before finishing the rapid event with a victory over Kateryna Lagno. Aronian finished the rapid in second place with 8/11, while Alexander Grischuk was third with 7/11. The tournament is not over, as the final standings will be decided based on the cumulative score of the rapid and blitz events. | Photo: Aditya Sur Roy