Vidit Gujrathi still leads the 2022 edition of Wijk aan Zee (the Tata Steel Masters) with three points after four rounds, but his tenure at the top was threatened today. With White against Andrey Esipenko he was in good shape through most of the short (32 move) game, but at the end he was worse when the draw was agreed and especially before Esipenko's last move. With a win Esipenko would have leapfrogged Vidit, but he was satisfied with a draw.
More surprisingly, he wasn't caught by Magnus Carlsen, who was winning more than once in a tricky game with Jorden Van Foreest. Van Foreest played very enterprising chess, and despite a couple of lapses his combative approach was (on balance) correct.
Jan-Krzysztof Duda was another player who could have caught Vidit with a win, and he was most certainly winning against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. In time trouble, however, he got bamboozled, and with successive errors went from winning to better to equal to worse to lost over the space of nine moves.
The only other player who could have caught Vidit with a win was Richard Rapport, but he was fortunate to bailed out of a bad position when Sam Shankland played the hasty 17.e6 (rather than, say, 17.f4). That game finished in a quick draw - only 24 moves.
Fabiano Caruana vs. Daniil Dubov was a relatively uneventful but real draw, while Sergey Karjakin's "game" against Anish Giri was a joke. Karjakin, with White, repeated a line that allows Black to force a repetition - one which has already occurred more than 30 times in tournament play - and the game finished in just 14 moves. Unless Karjakin is sick, it's hard to understand why he would do this.
Finally, someone who is interested in playing is the youngster, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, who nicely outplayed Nils Grandelius that went from an Exchange Gruenfeld to a sort of disastrous King's Indian for Black. The game lasted a long time, but Grandelius's position was just about hopeless by the game's halfway point.
The games, with my comments, are here. Tomorrow (Wednesday) is a rest day; this is what we have to look forward to on Thursday, in round 5 (of 13):