GMs Alireza Firouzja, Anish Giri, and Vincent Keymer all won to catch GM Matthias Bluebaum in the 2025 FIDE Grand Swiss lead on 6.5/9 with two rounds to go. Firouzja won a wild 82-move clash against previous co-leader GM Nihal Sarin, Giri caught GM Jorden van Foreest in the endgame, and Keymer bamboozled GM Parham Maghsoodloo in a complex struggle. Seven players are just half a point behind, including round-nine winners GMs Arjun Erigaisi, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, and Yu Yangyi.
GM Bibisara Assaubayeva had a huge chance to snatch the lead in the 2025 FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss, but allowed GM Kateryna Lagno to escape and remain half a point ahead on 7/9. Assaubayeva is joined by GM Vaishali Rameshbabu, GM Tan Zhongyi, and IM Song Yuxin, while GMs Mariya Muzychuk and Irina Krush won to retain some Candidates hopes on 6/9.
Round 10 is on Sunday, September 14, starting at 6 a.m. ET / 12:00 CEST / 3:30 p.m. IST.
Standings
We now have four leaders and a seven-player chasing pack going into the final two rounds of the FIDE Grand Swiss in Samarkand.
FIDE Grand Swiss Standings After Round 9
Lagno retained the sole lead in the Women’s Grand Swiss with four players only half a point behind.
FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss Standings After Round 9
Open: Firouzja, Giri, Keymer Catch Bluebaum In Lead
Six of the top-10 games were decisive with some heroic battles stretching into the eighth hour of play.
Round 9 Results: Open
Check out the full games and results.
Abdusattorov-Bluebaum was the only relatively quiet draw on the top boards as players jockeyed for position going into the final two rounds.
Co-leader Bluebaum’s draw meant Nihal could have taken the sole lead, and that was a real prospect when the Indian star unleashed a fine piece sacrifice that Firouzja described as “so creative” and confessed he’d “completely missed.” It was only the follow-up that Nihal fumbled, since 17.Nd6+! instead of 17.f4?! would have given him a winning position.
Firouzja called it “a very tough, complicated game,” but he pounced on a mistake in time trouble and then managed to grind out the endgame, though again it wasn’t easy. As he summed up: “It’s a draw, probably, but it’s so hard to play! Until the end he has to defend very boring positions, so that’s why he wanted to force things, and it didn’t go well.”
That took 2021 Grand Swiss winner Firouzja into the joint lead, and he was joined by two more players. Giri said of the line his Dutch colleague Van Foreest went for, “You have to really enjoy the suffering, embrace the suffering!”
That’s not the kind of chess you associate with Van Foreest, but he came very close to holding a draw. All he needed to do was jump in a different direction with his knight at the crucial moment.
The final player to join the leaders was Keymer, who won a hyper-sharp game against Maghsoodloo.
The German number-one commented, “Everyone starts to be more aggressive, less stable,” as he explained that with poor tiebreaks (since the higher-rated players have faced lower-rated opposition), only a win would give him and his opponent good chances of qualifying for the Candidates.
Keymer got everything he could hope for, as he surprised Maghsoodloo in the opening and then emerged on top after a complex battle. That’s our Game of the Day, which GM Dejan Bojkov has analyzed below.
GM Hans Niemann won a pawn against 16-year-old GM Abhimanyu Mishra but couldn’t squeeze out a win to join the leaders since Mishra once again both defended fantastically and was alert to spot that the position had been repeated on moves 91, 98, and 104—otherwise, it felt as though we could easily have got a 200-move game! As it was, Mishra has now gone unbeaten for 65 classical games in a row.
That left Niemann and Mishra half a point behind the leaders on 6/9, with the seven-player group on that score likely the last players still in with a realistic chance of qualifying for the Candidates. Some top names were left frustrated as they failed to reach that mark, including GMs Ian Nepomniachtchi, Vidit Gujrathi, and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, who all drew.
Other big names did win to hit that score, however. Arjun faced a GM Sam Sevian on a 43-game unbeaten streak in classical chess, and it seemed the streak would continue until a single mistake, played with two seconds on the clock, doomed the U.S. star. A couple of moves later it led to a brilliancy:
Yu Yangyi quietly joined the players in contention by grinding out a win against GM Marc’Andria Maurizzi, while Vachier-Lagrave reached 6/9 with a third win in a row, this time over 14-year-old GM Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus.
The French star revealed he’s going to play the prodigy in a match in December, adding, “He’s a huge talent, obviously, and more than a talent, a reasonably seasoned top player in the making!”
He’s a huge talent, obviously, and more than a talent, a reasonably seasoned top player in the making!
—Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on Erdogmus
On this occasion, however, Vachier-Lagrave caught his young opponent in some deep opening preparation, and one imprecise move was all it took for the task to become almost hopeless.
Erdogmus had, on the previous day, defeated and ended the Candidates hopes of GM Levon Aronian, and things wouldn’t improve for the Armenian-U.S. GM who, until now, had been having a wonderful year. In round nine he faced another teenager, 15-year-old U.S. prodigy GM Andy Woodward, and crashed and burned with 19.e5? already the point of no return.
Aronian is now dropping 19 rating points (just a couple of points less than Gukesh), while Woodward has gained 24.5.
He remained modest, commenting, “I don’t feel like I’m playing that great. I’m just getting quite a bit lucky, so I’m happy about that!”
That topped the upsets in round nine, though another that stands out is GM Aleksandra Goryachkina picking up a third win, this time against former world championship challenger GM Boris Gelfand.
FIDE Grand Swiss Round 9 Upsets
| Player (Seed) | FED | Rtg | Result | Player (Seed) | FED | Rtg |
| GM Levon Aronian (8) | 2744 | 0 – 1 | GM Andy Woodward (108) | 2557 | ||
| GM Alexander Donchenko (74) | 2624 | 1 – 0 | GM Pavel Eljanov (27) | 2682 | ||
| GM Boris Gelfand (44) | 2652 | 0 – 1 | GM Aleksandra Goryachkina (110) | 2528 | ||
| GM Saleh Salem (58) | 2640 | 0 – 1 | GM Alexandr Predke (90) | 2609 | ||
| GM Vasyl Ivanchuk (91) | 2608 | 1 – 0 | GM Etienne Bacrot (61) | 2637 | ||
| GM Andrei Volokitin (67) | 2628 | 0 – 1 | GM Aditya Mittal (104) | 2589 |
The Candidates qualifiers are likely to come from the top-six boards in round 10, with a winner in either of the clashes of the leaders, Firouzja-Giri and Keymer-Bluebaum, moving to the brink of qualification. Players on 5.5/9, meanwhile, will need to score 2/2 and pray!
FIDE Grand Swiss Round 10 Pairings (Top 14)
| # | White | FED | Rtg | Result | Black | FED | Rtg |
| 1 | GM Alireza Firouzja (6.5) | 2754 | – | GM Anish Giri (6.5) | 2746 | ||
| 2 | GM Vincent Keymer (6.5) | 2751 | – | GM Matthias Bluebaum (6.5) | 2671 | ||
| 3 | GM Yu Yangyi (6) | 2714 | – | GM Arjun Erigaisi (6) | 2771 | ||
| 4 | GM Nihal Sarin (6) | 2693 | – | GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov (6) | 2748 | ||
| 5 | GM Abhimanyu Mishra (6) | 2611 | – | GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (6) | 2738 | ||
| 6 | GM Hans Moke Niemann (6) | 2733 | – | GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu (5.5) | 2785 | ||
| 7 | GM Ian Nepomniachtchi (5.5) | 2742 | – | GM Nodirbek Yakubboev (5.5) | 2681 | ||
| 8 | GM Amin Tabatabaei (5.5) | 2673 | – | GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (5.5) | 2741 | ||
| 9 | GM Jorden van Foreest (5.5) | 2692 | – | GM Javokhir Sindarov (5.5) | 2722 | ||
| 10 | GM Ivan Saric (5.5) | 2655 | – | GM Vidit Gujrathi (5.5) | 2712 | ||
| 11 | GM Shant Sargsyan (5.5) | 2653 | – | GM Richard Rapport (5.5) | 2711 | ||
| 12 | GM Awonder Liang (5.5) | 2698 | – | GM Nikolas Theodorou (5.5) | 2646 | ||
| 13 | GM Andy Woodward (5.5) | 2557 | – | GM Parham Maghsoodloo (5.5) | 2692 | ||
| 14 | GM Volodar Murzin (5) | 2670 | – | GM Alexei Shirov (5.5) | 2616 |
Women: Lagno Escapes Vs. Assaubayeva To Keep Sole Lead
The action on the top-two boards was intense but ended in draws, with just four decisive games on the top-10 Women’s boards, including a good day for the Muzychuk sisters.
Round 9 Results: Women
Check out the full games and results.
It looked as though round nine in the Women’s event would belong to Assaubayeva. First Vaishali-Song ended in a spectacular draw, where Vaishali may have missed some chances.
Then Assaubayeva herself looked set to take down and leapfrog the leader after outplaying Lagno to reach a winning endgame. One slip with 42…Kf8?, however, and Lagno pounced to save the game and keep the sole lead.
GM Tan Zhongyi powered to a win over IM Carissa Yip to join Assaubayeva, Vaishali, and Song half a point behind the leader, though it’s important to note Tan has already qualified for the Candidates, so that if she finishes in the top two, another player below will make the cut.
Two players with only an outside chance are half a point further back on 6/9: Mariya Muzychuk, who beat her Ukrainian countrywoman GM Anna Ushenina and has made no draws so far in Samarkand, and eight-time U.S. Women’s Champion Krush, who said that her first-ever Grand Swiss is partly a warm-up for the upcoming U.S. Championships.
Krush beat former Women’s World Champion Antoaneta Stefanova, who grabbed a highly poisoned pawn.
That is one of five cases of a lower-rated player picking up a win.
FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss Round 9 Upsets
| Player (Seed) | FED | Rtg | Result | Player (Seed) | FED | Rtg |
| IM Teodora Injac (12) | 2454 | 0 – 1 | IM Ulviyya Fataliyeva (33) | 2385 | ||
| GM Irina Krush (44) | 2366 | 1 – 0 | GM Antoaneta Stefanova (27) | 2395 | ||
| IM Lilit Mkrtchian (28) | 2393 | 0 – 1 | IM Aleksandra Maltsevskaya (37) | 2379 | ||
| WIM Umida Omonova (52) | 2252 | 1 – 0 | IM Nurgyul Salimova (32) | 2386 | ||
| WIM Elnaz Kaliakhmet (51) | 2299 | 1 – 0 | IM Vantika Agrawal (35) | 2381 |
In the penultimate round, Lagno knows that a win over Tan will almost clinch a Candidates spot, but she has the black pieces. The other critical games are Song-Assaubayeva, Vaishali-Mariya Muzychuk, and Guo-Krush.
FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss Round 10 Pairings (Top 6)
| # | White | FED | Rtg | Result | Black | FED | Rtg |
| 1 | GM Tan Zhongyi (6.5) | 2531 | – | GM Kateryna Lagno (7) | 2505 | ||
| 2 | IM Song Yuxin (6.5) | 2409 | – | GM Bibisara Assaubayeva (6.5) | 2505 | ||
| 3 | GM Vaishali Rameshbabu (6.5) | 2452 | – | GM Mariya Muzychuk (6) | 2484 | ||
| 4 | IM Guo Qi (5.5) | 2371 | – | GM Irina Krush (6) | 2366 | ||
| 5 | IM Ulviyya Fataliyeva (5.5) | 2385 | – | GM Olga Girya (5.5) | 2386 | ||
| 6 | IM Polina Shuvalova (5) | 2492 | – | GM Anna Muzychuk (5.5) | 2535 |
The 2025 FIDE Grand Swiss and FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss are 11-round Swiss tournaments taking place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on September 4-15. Each will decide two places in the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournaments that select the next world championship challengers. The Open tournament has a $625,000 prize fund, with $90,000 for first place, while the Women’s is $230,000 ($40,000). The time control is classical, with a longer time control for the Open of 100 minutes/40 moves + 50 min/20 + 15 min, with a 30-second increment from move 1.
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