World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju was among only 17 of 116 players to win in the first round of the 2025 FIDE Grand Swiss in Samarkand, with other stars getting off to a quick start including GMs Alireza Firouzja, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, and Anish Giri. The Game of the Day came from 20-year-old GM Aydin Suleymanli, who unleashed some brilliant home-cooked analysis to follow up a queen sacrifice against GM Karthikeyan Murali.
It was mayhem in the 2025 FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss, with only four higher-rated players winning, while 11 lost, including top seeds GMs Anna Muzychuk and Tan Zhongyi. Anna was close to winning against 18-year-old IM-elect Zsoka Gaal, but completely forgot about her clock and lost on time.
Round two is on Friday, September 5, starting at 6 a.m. ET / 12:00 CEST / 3:30 p.m. IST.
The Grand Swiss Comes To Samarkand
The race for the 2026 FIDE Candidates heats up with one of the toughest events of the world championship cycle, the FIDE Grand Swiss. The 11-round event is taking place in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, an ancient Silk Road city that hosted the 2023 World Rapid & Blitz and will host the 2026 FIDE World Chess Olympiad.
This is the fourth edition of the Grand Swiss, with the top two players in both sections set to qualify for the eight-player 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournaments that decide the next world championship challengers.
| Year | Location | Open Winner | Open Runner-up | Women’s Winner | Women’s Runner-up |
| 2019 | Isle of Man | Wang Hao | Fabiano Caruana | ||
| 2021 | Riga, Latvia | Alireza Firouzja | Fabiano Caruana | Lei Tingjie | Elisabeth Paehtz |
| 2023 | Isle of Man | Vidit Gujrathi | Hikaru Nakamura | Vaishali Rameshbabu | Anna Muzychuk |
The $625,000 Open section ($90,000 for first place) has 116 players, with the field topped by the Indian triumvirate of GMs Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, Arjun Erigaisi, and Gukesh.
The main way to qualify was by being in the top-100 on the June 2025 FIDE rating list, though there was also a rating requirement of playing 30 classical games over the year. That formally excluded stars such as GMs Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, and Viswanathan Anand, though if they’d wanted to play it’s almost certain they would have been given a wildcard, as, for instance, was former world championship challenger GM Boris Gelfand.
The games requirement may have stopped players such as GMs Leinier Dominguez, Peter Svidler, and Liem Le taking part, but others, including former World Champion Ding Liren, GM Wesley So, and GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda have chosen not to take part. There’s also no GM Fabiano Caruana, the one player to already have stamped his ticket to the Candidates in the Open section.
One player very notably taking part, however, is the world champion, who explained his decision at the opening press conference:
Although there’s no need for me to qualify, I think this is still a great tournament. There are not many super strong open Swiss tournaments. It’s an opportunity for me to play in a different format and prove myself.
It’s an opportunity for me to play in a different format and prove myself.
—Gukesh Dommaraju
If he finishes in the top two then third place will be enough for a Candidates spot.
One player who will be competing with Gukesh is local star Abdusattorov, who will be looking to bounce back after a tough event in St. Louis. Asked for an unpopular chess opinion, he came up with, “Gukesh will lose his title in the next match.”
🔥 Nodirbek Abdusattorov shared his unpopular chess opinion… and it’s about Gukesh 👀
Both stars are set to clash at the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 — don’t miss it!Full interview 🔗 https://t.co/ZWghK2UHQY
♟️ FIDE Grand Swiss 2025
📍 Samarkand 🇺🇿
🗓 September 4–15
📺 Live on… pic.twitter.com/Vpokhf2q0i
— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) September 2, 2025
There’s every chance Gukesh and Abdusattorov might meet later in the event.
The Women’s FIDE Grand Swiss is half the size, with 56 players (the top-44 by rating were invited), but is more impacted by the Candidates qualification cycle, since five players have already qualified: GMs Zhu Jiner and Aleksandra Goryachkina via the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix, and GMs Divya Deshmukh, Tan, and Koneru Humpy via the FIDE Women’s World Cup.
Only Tan out of those players will still play in the FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss, with world number-six Anna Muzychuk the top seed.
That doesn’t mean all the other Candidates are absent, however—Divya and Goryachkina play in the Open section!
The one big difference between the two sections in terms of format is the time control, with the main event featuring a very long three-part control (no longer used in the world championship match itself), while the women’s event features the most standard FIDE time control.
One difference from previous FIDE events, however, is that the dress code has been relaxed to allow jeans and one-color sneakers—a victory for the absent Carlsen and players such as Zhu who had suffered from dress-code incidents.
❗️FIDE Grand Swiss 2025: Updated dress code offers more flexibility❗️
FIDE is pleased to publish the dress code for the FIDE Grand Swiss and FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss, reflecting a modern and inclusive approach while preserving the elegance of our sport.
Appropriate jeans are… pic.twitter.com/B43hasQkGZ
— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) August 29, 2025
Open: Gukesh, Firouzja, Abdusattorov, Giri Get Off To Winning Starts
Round 1 Results: Open
Check out the full games and results.
The Grand Swiss isn’t like other Swiss tournaments where the favorites cruise to wins in the opening rounds. The opposition is so strong, with only two players not GMs, that we saw no less than 41 draws. That meant winning one of the 17 decisive games already made players stand out from the pack, though a lot can change over an 11-round event—in 2023, GM Vidit Gujrathi lost to GM Erwin l’Ami in round one, but then went on to win it all!
This year as well the focus at the top was on Indian stars, with Praggnanandhaa and Arjun both suffering, against GMs Jeffery Xiong and Maksim Chigaev, respectively, so that Praggnanandhaa commented, “given the position I had I’m fine with making the draw.”
The third Indian, Gukesh, got off to the perfect start, commenting on his win over eight-time French Champion GM Etienne Bacrot: “I’m obviously glad with the win with the black pieces in the first round.”
Gukesh took over in the middlegame, while the exchange sac 32…Rxd2! was the beginning of the end. Bacrot’s situation was not helped by having two minutes on his clock.
Other big guns to win included local hero Abdusattorov, who tricked GM Velimir Ivic in the run-up to the time control, and Firouzja, who squeezed in the endgame until GM Bassem Amin cracked, then applied some elegant final touches such as 53.Nc5!.
2021 Grand Swiss winner Alireza Firouzja is finishing in style! https://t.co/kVeTvqbqlb pic.twitter.com/4KFsIJBIsV
— chess24 (@chess24com) September 4, 2025
There was also a very smooth start for Giri, who commented, “Obviously I want to become world champion, as eight-year-old Gukesh has once said.”
Obviously I want to become world champion, as eight-year-old Gukesh has once said.
—Anish Giri
Giri played the Najdorf against GM Robert Hovhannisyan, but not quite what he’d recommended in his course. He explained, “It’s my old Chessable course, that gives 7…Be7, but I’m making a new one, where I’m going to give 7…Be6.” The public demonstration couldn’t have gone better, with Giri describing the final position as “very satisfying.”
Defending champion Vidit was another top player to open with a smooth win, against GM Alexander Donchenko, but otherwise there was a sea of draws.
That didn’t mean no action, however, with GM Gabriel Sargissian coming incredibly close to taking down GM Hans Niemann. 17…d5!! was a brilliant idea, while Niemann’s decision to take the bait with 18.gxh5? was almost punished. In the end, however, it was Niemann who could have played for more before the players took a draw by repetition.
The outright upsets were few and far between.
Round 1 FIDE Grand Swiss Upsets
| Player (Seed) | FED | Rtg | Result | Player (Seed) | FED | Rtg |
| GM David Anton Guijarro (71) | 2625 | 1 – 0 | GM Vladimir Fedoseev (13) | 2731 | ||
| GM Pentala Harikrishna (18) | 2704 | 0 – 1 | GM Anton Demchenko (76) | 2620 | ||
| GM Aydin Suleymanli (93) | 2602 | 1 – 0 | GM Murali Karthikeyan (35) | 2669 | ||
| GM Ivan Zemlyanskii (105) | 2586 | 1 – 0 | GM Aleksandar Indjic (47) | 2650 |
Spain’s GM David Anton hit a peak rating above 2700 after finishing fifth, level on points with Carlsen and Nakamura, in the 2019 FIDE Grand Swiss, so that his taking down 13th seed GM Vladimir Fedoseev isn’t as big a surprise as it looks on paper.
GM Anton Demchenko, meanwhile, owed his win to GM Pentala Harikrishna’s mistake 20.Rc2?, allowing 20…Nxa4! to come with crunching effect.
21.bxa4 Bxa4 hits both white rooks while also making a path for Black’s passed pawns, but 21.Ra1 in the game was no better.
15-year-old Ivan Zemlyanskii gave more evidence of his talent, but the most dramatic upset win came for 20-year-old Suleymanli, who noted his one win in 2023, when he scored 50 percent, came against Gukesh!
This time the Azerbaijani talent completely bamboozled two-time Indian Champion Karthikeyan, who could justifiably feel a little unlucky, since Suleymanli admitted of his queen sacrifice and brilliant follow-up: “Literally until the end it was my prep!”
That’s our Game of the Day, with GM Rafael Leitao giving the lowdown on an important game for opening theory.
As always, there’s too much chess to cover. Other highlights included Divya losing a crazy game against the player who seconded her to victory in the Women’s World Cup, GM Abhimanyu Puranik.
57-year-old Gelfand also beat GM Baadur Jobava in 23 moves in a line he remembered playing back in 1995.
The Women’s Grand Swiss, meanwhile, had an altogether different first round.
2025 FIDE Grand Swiss: Favorites Fall
Despite seven decisive games on the top-10 boards, GM Bibisara Assaubayeva was the only favorite to win!
Round 1 Results: Women
Check out the full games and results.
We mentioned above that in the Grand Swiss there isn’t the usual expectation for the higher-rated players to win in the first round, but for 11 of them to lose while only four win, out of 28 boards, feels unprecedented. The list of upsets, ordered in terms of the rating gap between the players, looks as follows:
Round 1 FIDE Women’s Grand Swiss Upsets
| Player (Seed) | FED | Rtg | Result | Player (Seed) | FED | Rtg |
| WIM Umida Omonova (52) | 2252 | 1 – 0 | IM Oliwia Kiolbasa (24) | 2405 | ||
| GM Anna Muzychuk (1) | 2535 | 0 – 1 | WGM Zsoka Gaal (29) | 2388 | ||
| GM Olga Girya (30) | 2386 | 1 – 0 | GM Zhongyi Tan (2) | 2531 | ||
| IM Polina Shuvalova (5) | 2492 | 0 – 1 | IM Ulviyya Fataliyeva (33) | 2385 | ||
| WGM Xeniya Balabayeva (34) | 2383 | 1 – 0 | GM Mariya Muzychuk (6) | 2484 | ||
| IM Yuliia Osmak (7) | 2478 | 0 – 1 | IM Vantika Agrawal (35) | 2381 | ||
| WGM Mo Zhai (36) | 2380 | 1 – 0 | IM Leya Garifullina (8) | 2477 | ||
| IM Carissa Yip (11) | 2458 | 0 – 1 | IM Eline Roebers (39) | 2377 | ||
| IM Olga Badelka (40) | 2375 | 1 – 0 | IM Teodora Injac (12) | 2454 | ||
| IM Meruert Kamalidenova (46) | 2349 | 1 – 0 | WGM Anna Shukhman (18) | 2420 | ||
| GM Valentina Gunina (19) | 2418 | 0 – 1 | WGM Maili-Jade Ouellet (47) | 2348 |
Six of the top-ten seeds lost, including the top two. Anna Muzychuk’s loss, however, was tragic, since it came in a position only she could win. This is the position with only one second left on Anna’s clock.
There was no panic, with Anna and her opponent, 18-year-old Hungarian IM-elect Zsoka Gaal, totally focused on the chessboard. As the time ticked to 0.00, however, Gaal immediately pointed it out and the game was over for a shell-shocked Muzychuk.
In fact it would be a difficult day for the Muzychuk sisters, with Mariya blundering in a tough position against 19-year-old Kazakh WGM Xeniya Balabayeva with 36…Ra6?.
GM Olga Girya explained, “I played too slow, she played too fast!” for how she took over and beat former Women’s World Champion Tan from a difficult position, but perhaps the biggest swing of the day was in IM Carissa Yip vs. IM Eline Roebers.
Yip was winning on move 38, but with 51 seconds on her clock it was understandable the U.S. star missed the killer blow 38.Rxe6!!. After 38.Nd5?, played with six seconds to spare, her Dutch rival went on to win.
Wins for the favorites were incredibly rare, but two top players to shine were Assaubayeva and GM Vaishali Rameshbabu. The later confessed, “I don’t know how I managed to win in 2023,” but the defending champion again started off well in 2025 with a win over WGM Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova, who is back in Uzbekistan after her time representing the U.S.A.
Vaishali will take on Roebers in round two, while the top-board match-up in the Open section sees World Champion Gukesh take on 14-year-old GM Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, the highest-rated 14-year-old ever and a likely contender for the world title in the future.
Can the young Turkish star pull off a sensation?
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 decide 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, with a $40,000 top prize. The time control is classical, with a long 100 minutes/40 moves, then 50 min/20 + 15 min for the Open, with a 30-second increment from move 1, while the Women’s is the FIDE standard 90/40 + 30.
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