The Week in Chess

1. Asian Individual Championships 2025 - Games and Results

   The Asian Individual Championships take place in Al Ain UAE, Wed 7th to Thu 15th May 2025. Open and women's events.

   Players: Sarin Nihal, Amin Tabatabaei M., Nodirbek Yakubboev, Murali Karthikeyan, Shamsiddin Vokhidov, Son Nguyen Ngoc Truong, Saleh Salem A.R., Pouya Idani, Luke Mendonca Leon, Abhimanyu Puranik, Xiangyu Xu, Bardiya Daneshvar, V Pranav, Jingyao Tin, L Narayanan S, David Paravyan, Abhijeet Gupta, M Pranesh, Pa Iniyan, Jinshi Bai, Shekhar Ganguly Surya, Venkataraman Karthik, Ivan Zemlyanskii etc

   Leading players in the women's event: Leya Garifullina, Valentina Gunina, Olga Girya, Yuxin Song, Nguyen Pham Le Thao, Warda Aulia Medina,

2. GCT Superbet Chess Classic Romania 2025 - Games and Results

   The Grand Chess Tour Superbet Chess Classic Romania takes place in Bucharest 7th to 16th May 2025. Players: D Gukesh, Fabiano Caruana, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, R Praggnanandhaa, Alireza Firouzja, Wesley So, Levon Aronian, Krzysztof Duda Jan, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Daniel Deac Bogdan. There is a 30 minute delay for the live games.

3. Russian Team Championships 2025 - Games and Results

   The Russian Team Championships took place in Sochi Sat 26th Apr to Mon 5th May 2025. Premier: Grischuk, Artemev, Morozevich, Malakhov, Sjugirov, etc. Higher League: Esipenko, Makarian, Rychagov etc. Women: Garifullina, Gunina, Girya etc. With the current situation this is nowhere near as strong as in the past. SK KPRF from Moscow with Grischuk and Artemiev won the title. The team names in the results and for the players might look a bit weird. All the documentation was in Cyrillic and that leaves me two choices, google translate, which is generally good but occasionally very weird, or the direct one for one substitution of the Cyrillic letters for Western ones, again not without problems, but the solution I went with.

4. FIDE Women's Grand Prix in Grosslobming 2025 - Games and Results

   FIDE Women's Grand Prix takes place in Grosslobming, Austria Tue 6th May to Fri 16th May 2025. Players: Jiner Zhu, Zhongyi Tan, Anna Muzychuk, Nana Dzagnidze, Mariya Muzychuk, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Rameshbabu Vaishali, Lela Javakhishvili, Olga Badelka and Nurgyul Salimova.

   The event is the final in a series of 6. The top two in the final standings will qualify for the Candidates. The leaders are Aleksandra Goryachkina followed by Humpy Koneru, neither play in this final event. Goryachkina seems certain to take one of these places and indeed almost certainly win the series, Humpy Koneru will likely not finish second. Zhu Jiner won't need a very big result to overtake her and Anna Muzychuk & Tan Zhongyi are also still in the race.

5. 4NCL 2024-25 - Games and Results

   The 4NCL UK Chess League took place Sat 23rd Nov 2024 to Mon 5th May 2025. Manx Liberty took a three point lead into the final weekend over Wood Green but that was reduced to two after they only drew 4-4 against The Sharks 1. In Round 10 The Sharks beat Wood Green and this made Manx Liberty champions ahead of their own final round match against Wood Green which was drawn 4-4.

6. Manx Liberty win the 4NCL 2024-25 season - 10

   Manx Liberty took a three point lead in the 4NCL into the final three round May Day Bank Holiday weekend. They meet their closest challengers Wood Green in the final round 11. What happened was slightly unexpected, the destination of the title was strongly influenced by a mid-table third party.

   In Round 9 The Sharks 1 managed a 4-4 draw against Manx Liberty whilst Wood Green comfortably beat Barnet Knights to move within striking distance, and revealed they had recruited Michael Adams for the final weekend. Round 10 showed that The Sharks 1 hadn't finished decisively intervening in the season when they edged out Wood Green 4.5.3.5. All but one game was decisive. Meanwhile Manx Liberty guaranteed the title was theirs by an emphatic 7.5-0.5 win against a struggling Alba side.

   We can still look forward to an interesting final match on Bank Holiday Monday, but the main issue has been decided.

7. Sardinia World Open 2025 - Games and Results

   The Sardinia World Open took place Sun 27th Apr to Sat 3rd May 2025 in OroseiI, Italy. The event was controversially won by Christopher Woojin Yoo with 7.5/9 half a point clear of Ihor Samunenkov and Lorenzo Lodici. Back in October 2024 Yoo was expelled from the US Chess Championships after he assaulted a woman following a loss of a game of chess he found distressing. Yoo was banned for a year from US chess and that ban was supposed to be extended to being a worldwide one via FIDE, the international chess federation. The best I can understand the situation is this, the US Chess Federation took many months to apply for this worldwide ban extension and it is only now under consideration by FIDE, now with Yoo now having played, this is a little awkward to say the least.