The Week in Chess

• Javokhir Sindarov wins the FIDE World Cup 2025 - 8

  Javokhir Sindarov beat Wei Yi in the final of the FIDE World Cup. The two classical games were drawn taking the match to a final tie-break. The first classical game was a Petroff Defence where Wei Yi as black briefly had a small advantage, the second game was a 30 move draw in a Four Knights that only took a few minutes to execute. The rapid games were not of the highest quality, both players were almost certainly very tired, and they'd also achieved their main objective, qualifying for the Candidates. In the first rapid game Wei Yi blundered with 30...g5? and this could have been met by 31.Be4! winning. The second game was a fluctuating struggle where Wei Yi suddenly found his king under attack and couldn't find the only move to save himself.

• 15th XTX Markets London Chess Classic 2025 - Games and Results

  The 15th XTX Markets London Chess Classic takes place Wed 26th Nov to Sun 7th Dec 2025. Players: Alireza Firouzja, Luke Mcshane, Michael Adams, Nikolas Theodorou, Sam Shankland, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Pavel Eljanov, Nikita Vitiugov, Abhimanyu Mishra and Gawain Maroroa Jones. There's an open alongside with Praggnanandhaa as top seed. Strong Rapid and Blitz rounds out the event.

• Wei Yi and Javokhir Sindarov reach the FIDE World Cup final and qualify for the Candidates tournament - 7

  The FIDE World Cup final will be between Wei Yi of China and Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan, this result mean both have qualified for the FIDE Candidates tournament in Pegeia, Cyprus, 28th March to 16th April 2026. These players join Fabiano Caruana, Anish Giri, Matthias Bluebaum who have already qualified for the Candidates, Hikaru Nakamura is almost certain to qualify on rating, in addition, the winner of the 3rd-4th playoff in this World Cup will also earn a place.

• Tata Steel Chess tournament all set for its 2026 edition after announcing the players -

  The Tata Steel Chess tournament takes place in Wijk aan Zee 16th Jan - 1st Feb 2026. The fields for both the Masters and Challengers have been set and they reflect the state of professional chess today.

  The Masters group has an average age of just 23. Exciting players like Vincent Keymer, Arjun Erigaisi, Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Hans Niemann should light up the competition. World Champion Gukesh might be struggling at the moment but you'd want him in your tournament, especially as he only just missed out last year following a tie-break match with the eventual winner Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa. Dutch number one Anish Giri is the oldest player in the field at 32, he has enjoyed one of his best years, the highlight of which was his qualification for the Candidates by taking clear first place in the Grand Swiss Tournament in Samarkand.

• Major surprises in the second round of the FIDE World Cup - 2

  The FIDE World Cup takes place in Goa, India, Sat 1st to Wed 26th Nov 2025. The second round concluded today, this round was where the event started in earnest, when the top seeds entered the fray. There has never been a shock winner of this event, but there are always surprise eliminations. Ian Nepomniachtchi, Wesley So and Hans Moke Niemann all would have fancied their chances against anyone, but Diptayan Ghosh, Titas Stremavicius and Lorenzo Lodici all had different ideas. Santosh Gujrathi Vidit had a bit too much for wunderkind Faustino Oro, well known players Vasyl Ivanchuk, David Navara, Ray Robson and Johan-Sebastian Christiansen didn't survive the round either. 128 players started the round, 64 are left.

• FIDE World Cup 2025 - Games and Results

  The FIDE World Cup took place in Goa, India, Sat 1st to Wed 26th Nov 2025. Players included: World Champion Gukesh, Erigaisi, Praggnanandhaa, Giri, So, Keymer, Wei Yi, Abdusattorov, Mamedyarov, Niemann, MVL, Nepomniachtchi, Le, Rapport, Aronian etc. It was a eight round knockout but the top 50 players only enter the competition in round 2 alongside the 78 winners of Round 1. The top three finishers qualified for the Candidates tournament although players such as Gukesh and Giri and Caruana didn't require this. The Women's World Cup event that regularly takes place alongside was instead held in July as a separate tournament which I think was better for both.

  In the end the surprise winner was 20 year old Javokhir Sindarov who started as 16th seed beat 7th seed Wei Yi although they'd both qualified for the Candidates. Andrey Esipenko beat Nodirbek Yakubboev in the 3rd-4th playoff to take the final Candidates place.

• Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown 2025 - Games and Results

  The Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown took place in Saint Louis Mon 27th Oct to Wed 29th Oct 2025. Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and World Champion Gukesh played three days of fast rapid chess (10m+5spm), a double round robin each day, eventually adding up to 18 rounds, Clutch chess is a special scoring system where the points available from each game increased each day from 1 to 2 to 3 with similar increases for draws from 0.5 to 1 to 1.5.

  Magnus Carlsen was the runaway winner, the large margin was due to his domination of Gukesh who made huge errors in their games and only managed one draw, there has to be a psychological component to these mistakes as his score was perfectly decent against the other players. Carlsen won all the mini-matches and continues to be better than anyone else. Fabiano Caruana finished second, Nakamura third and Gukesh last. The scoring system didn't change the finishing order of the players in any way.