Caruana speaks on tough Tata Steel

In the newest episode of the C-Squared Podcast, by GMs Fabiano Caruana and Cristian Chirila, Caruana spoke on his difficulties at Tata Steel Chess 2025. He gave some deep analysis of his round 10 game against Pentala Harikrishna, where he failed to convert a winning rook endgame, and the consequences of it.

“After this, I had given up hope in the tournament… If I had won that game, then there was a theoretical chance [of contending in the event],” Caruana said. He then described not feeling in a good space emotionally, and how that fed into his loss in the following game against Praggnanandhaa. Regretting that he had not played it safer, in recognition of his not being in top shape, he was especially critical of not playing Qf2 (D) and insisting on a trade of queens into a “two-result” endgame, where a loss would be all but out of the question.

As Caruana describes, it would have forced Black into a tough choice of accepting the trade or not, and given him time to figure out the position. Instead White got into big trouble on the queenside, and Pragg broke through in style.

In the wake of those two games, Caruana finished with a draw and a loss to the two lowest-rated players in the tournament, leading to a drop to #4 in the live world rankings. “I think the tournament ended at a good moment for me, before it got even worse,” he said. “I don’t think I would have stabilized.”

You can watch the full episode on the C-Squared Youtube channel, where they also get into the latest dramatics of “Freestyle vs. FIDE”.

Photo by Lennart Ootes / Tata Steel Chess