Vaishali Impressing In Budapest
By Cameron W. · Tue, 10 Nov 2026
Vaishali beat Hans Niemann and Wesley So with Black in the opening blitz at Total Chess in Budapest, warning her opponents ahead of tomorrows main event start.
If you wanted to see what a 3+2 blitz Swiss can do to a scoreboard, you could have followed Vaishali Rameshbabu around the playing hall on the opening day of Total Chess. She beat Hans Niemann. She beat Wesley So. She also lost three times, drew four games and finished on 4/9 in the unofficial table, a score that says very little about how wild the ride really was.
A flying start against the Americans
Her day began with the pairing no one expected to go her way. Drawn against Niemann in round one, she won with the black pieces. Two rounds on, she was Black again against So, and she won again. By simple subtraction from the listed blitz ratings, she was giving up 366 points to Niemann and 400 to So, and she was the lowest-rated player in the 24-player field on those lists. Neither game has had its moves published, so what happened on the board is for the replay.
The middle stretch
In between came a loss to Vladislav Artemiev in round two, and then a draw with Jan-Krzysztof Duda in round four. Round five brought Arjun Erigaisi, who beat her with White. Then she steadied: a draw with Richard Rapport in round six, and another with Anish Giri in round seven. Round eight went the other way, a loss to Haik Martirosyan with White, before she closed with a draw as Black against Bibisara Assaubayeva, who took her only half-point of the day from that game.
The colour split
Add it up and a clear pattern appears. With Black she scored 3/5, with two wins, two draws and a loss. With White she managed 1/4 from two draws and two losses. In total, that makes two wins, four draws and three defeats for the day.
Where that leaves her
On points she ended level with Abhimanyu Mishra, Liem Le and Artemiev on 4, which leaves the four of them tied for 15th in the unofficial final table. The official order will be set once the arbiters apply tiebreaks. Magnus Carlsen won the Swiss unbeaten on 7, ahead of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on 6.5 and Levon Aronian on 6.
The rank matters more than a blitz result usually would, because the Swiss order is the tiebreak in the group stage. Vaishali is in Group D with Niemann, So, Erigaisi, Vachier-Lagrave and Assaubayeva, and from November 11 she will meet each of them twice at 45 minutes plus 30 seconds per move. If she finishes level on points with any of them, the blitz order decides who goes ahead, and that order is not kind to her. Vachier-Lagrave (6.5), Niemann and Erigaisi (5.5 each) and So (4.5) all finished ahead of her on points, so only Assaubayeva, on 0.5, sits below her.
What it means
Nobody wins a trophy for the opening day, and a 4/9 score will not make headlines. But beating two established elite players with Black, in a field she entered as the lowest-rated name, is the sort of start that changes how an opponent looks at the pairings sheet. The slow games begin now, and so does the part that pays.
Sources
- Total Chess, Budapest 2026 Blitz Swiss (results and unofficial standings)
- Total Chess, Budapest 2026 overview (groups, format)
- ChessBase India, Total Chess in Budapest: the format explained
- World Chess, Total Chess 2026: everything you need to know
- Wikipedia, Total Chess World Championship 2026 (blitz ratings)
