The Week in Chess

1. 38th Leon Chess 2025 - Games and Results

   The 38th Leon Chess tournament takes place Fri 4th Jul to Sun 6th Jul 2025. Four game rapid matches followed by blitz tie-breaks if necessary. Viswanathan Anand beat youngster Faustino Oro but only after a tie-break. Le Quang Liem plays Jaime Santos Latasa in the second match with the final on Sunday.

2. China YanCheng GM Match 2025 - Games and Results

   The China YanCheng GM Match takes place Wed 2nd Jul to Sun 6th Jul 2025. Wei Yi plays Levon Aronian in four classical games followed by four rapid games on the final day.

3. SuperUnited Croatia Rapid and Blitz 2025 - Games and Results

   The SuperUnited Croatia Rapid and Blitz takes place Wed 2nd Jul to Sun 6th Jul 2025. Players: Magnus, Carlsen, World Champion D Gukesh, Alireza Firouzja, Wesley So, Fabiano Caruana, Jan Krzysztof Duda, R Praggnanandhaa, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Anish Giri and Ivan Saric.

   World Chess Champion Gukesh won the rapid portion of the event, he lost against Duda in the first round and then won five in a row with Magnus Carlsen being the last of these wins, he had two draws at the start of the final day before beating Wesley So. There is the blitz portion to come, the rapid games count double and the winner is the combination of the two.

4. Titled Tuesday Blitz 1st July 2025 - Games and Results

   The Titled Tuesday Blitz 1st July 2025 events saw V Pranav win the early on tie-break from M Pranesh and Denis Lazavik after all scored 9.5/11 and in the late Parham Maghsoodloo won on tie-break from the youngster Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus and Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son.

5. Praggnanandhaa wins the Uzchess Cup Masters - 1-9

   Praggnanandhaa won the Uzchess Cup, Masters in Tashkent that finished on June 27th and consolidated his lead in the 2025 FIDE Circuit (chessnumbers article on chess.com: that has a first prize of a Candidates place. Praggnanandhaa had to beat the long time leader Nodirbek Abdusattorov with the black pieces in the final round.</p> <p> Praggnanandhaa emerged as winner only after two blitz tie-breaks against Abdusattorov and Javokhir Sindarov.</p> <p>The event will be likely remembered for Richard Rapport's impressive sacrificial win in a King's Indian over Praggnanandhaa in Round 6. </p> <p>I have some annotated games below. This isn't what I'm aiming to do eventually, I want to do one or two games at most where I annotate. I'm also going to change the news feed to very short reportsd and move this to another section. The site is very much work in progress at the moment.</p>"

6. Chess Stars 5.0 2025 - Games and Results

   The Chess Stars 5.0 tournament took place in Moscow 26th to 30th June 2025. Players: Vladislav Artemiev, Sergey Karjakin, Teimour Radjabov, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Raunak Sadhwani, Hou Yifan, Aleksandra Goryachkina, Kateryna Lagno, Bibisara Assaubayeva and Valentina Gunina. 3 days of rapid was followed by 2 days of blitz. Vladislav Artemiev won the rapid with 7/9 and blitz with 14.5/18. Raunak Sadhwani was second in the rapid and Sergey Karjakin second in the blitz.

7. Niemann-Vidit Match 2025 - Games and Results

   The Hans Moke Niemann against Santosh Vidit blitz match on Endgame.ai eventually took place 28th to 29th June 2025 after being announced for earlier in the week. Niemann won 12-6 on day 1 which was 3m+1spm blitz and 10.5-7.5 on day 2 which turned out to be Chess960 (in advance material there was no mention so I concluded it would be two days of standard blitz) and 3m+2spm blitz. On day one Niemann lost game 8 due to a mouse-slip and won on time in game 11 which he seemed to regard as payback.

   The downloadable PGN from the official site got a bit closer, the starting positions on day 2 for Chess960 were a real bonus, having the same players as white and black in every game meant half were wrong. Also still no results but fixing all this took less time than previous events. I don't have a way to display Chess960, but both day's games are available for download.