GM Wesley So won the 2025 Sinquefield Cup, his second time winning the elite event since 2016. While all other classical games ended in draws, So won on demand against GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov to reach three-way blitz tiebreaks with GMs Fabiano Caruana and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu. He beat Praggnanandhaa and drew Caruana, from a two-pawns-down position, to earn the prestigious title and $77,667.
Despite the tournament win, So missed out on the Grand Chess Tour Finals by one half of a tour point. The four players who qualified are GMs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Caruana, Levon Aronian, and Praggnanandhaa. The Grand Chess Tour Finals take place from September 28 to October 3 in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Standings After Round 9
Playoffs Standings
Round 9: So Wins On Demand, Others Draw
Caruana and Praggnanandhaa entered the final round with a half-point lead over the field. So was the X factor; with a win on demand over Abdusattorov, he could potentially leapfrog the leaders. The scenario with the most intrigue was: If Caruana lost, So would even qualify for the Finals in Sao Paolo over him.
So 1-0 Abdusattorov
So, who had drawn his first six games in the event, scored his two wins just in time. In round seven, he beat World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, and with a second win against Abdusattorov he jumped five places to number seven in the world on the live rating list, passing GM Alireza Firouzja. Abdusattorov dropped 22 rating points and out of the top 10, now at number-11 behind GM Vincent Keymer.
So said after winning the event, “I’ve been waiting for this a long time… in the last two years, I only won one or two events.” He thanked God, his mother, and, perhaps surprisingly, GM Gawain Jones. The opening idea he played against Abdusattorov was from the English grandmaster’s book, Coffehouse Repertoire 1.e4. “It’s actually a very risky line,” he explained, “if Black plays perfectly, White is even a bit worse in many lines, but I thought I had to risk it.”
I thought I had to risk it.
—Wesley So
The game featured nice maneuvers by both sides. The first was Abdusattorov bringing his knight from g8 all the way to b8, all engine-approved. Then, in the middlegame, So paused with pushing his kingside majority to walk his king all the way from g1 to b3, before carrying out the attack. The path is outlined below:
Methodically, So broke through on the kingside and then won the queen and knight vs. queen and bishop endgame. GM Dejan Bojkov analyzes the Game of the Day below. (It will be added later.)
The rest of the classical games were drawn, which meant that So was locked out of Brazil, but he could still win the Sinquefield Cup.
Caruana ½-½ Gukesh
The one result So really needed was for Gukesh to win with the black pieces. Praggnanandhaa would have won the event outright in this case, but So would have qualified for the Finals. However, Caruana found a risk-free way to trade queens and press in the Italian without much risk.
Caruana shared, “I was kind of considering, ‘Should I just force a draw from the opening?’ like some players did today. But I really wanted to play, I thought I could play in a way which doesn’t require excessive risk.”
I thought I could play in a way which doesn’t require excessive risk.
—Fabiano Caruana
Caruana was “very happy” with the position he got after 15.Nb3 and explained that while it may not look like much, the position can still be “kind of poisonous.” He had some pressure after Gukesh’s controversial 16…b5!?, a move that might not be outright bad but one that Svidler and Praggnanandhaa considered unnecessarily weakening. But it wasn’t ever enough for more than a slight advantage and the game ended peacefully.
Aronian ½-½ Praggnanandhaa
Neither player had much reason to risk much, as both qualified for the GCT Finals with a draw. Praggnanandhaa said he did consider playing the Sicilian but then made the prudent choice of playing solidly with Black. Although he could not know it at the time, since his game ended before Caruana’s, the draw was good enough for Pragg to reach the playoffs.
Although Aronian was out of contention to win the Sinquefield Cup, he did reach his goal of qualifying for Sao Paulo. He ended on +1, a good result even despite missing a win that appeared for one move against Gukesh in round eight. About that one, he said, “I think in any other circumstances it would be a shock, but my goal was generally qualifying, and I knew that if I draw the last two games I will have 90 percent of both… Under any other circumstances, I would think longer.”
Praggnanandhaa, in his interview, said:
After Zagreb [where he finished second to last] I needed a good result here to make it and I think I played solid, good chess. I was never worse in any games. I got two big chances which I took, so I can be satisfied with my performance.
I got two big chances which I took, so I can be satisfied with my performance.
—Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu
Duda ½-½ Vachier-Lagrave
GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda was evidently ready to finish the tournament as he opted for 9.Nd2 in the Grunfeld, allowing the draw that we saw in the game. Vachier-Lagrave officially punched his ticket to Brazil, a country he will visit for the first time. The game was over in five minutes.
MVL finished with nine draws in nine rounds, but he had an explanation for the lack of wins despite several chances. He explained that it’s a feature of his style:
Over the years, I defend very tenaciously, but at the same time sometimes, especially in technical endgame, I would leave half-points at the table. It happened many times. Creating chances is very difficult, but converting them is quite as much.
Creating chances is very difficult, but converting them is quite as much.
—Maxime Vachier-Lagrave
Firouzja ½-½ Sevian
It was an end to the nightmare for GM Alireza Firouzja, who generally does well in St. Louis, but won’t qualify for the Finals. For GM Sam Sevian, it was a solid event with nine draws and zero losses against higher-rated, elite players in every single round.
Sevian was satisfied with the result, though he acknowledged it could have been better. He recalled that he had a winning position against So in round one and that he could have pressed against Caruana in round six, had he realized that he had a perpetual in the back pocket. Instead, he forced the draw right away.
Sevian’s goal is to get to the 2730 and higher, which is the rating range where he said players start getting invites to top events such as the Olympiad. Up next for him is the 2025 FIDE Grand Swiss; in fact, every participant of this field will be flying to Samarkand except for So. Duda, who earlier said he will not participate in the World Cup or the Grand Swiss, is currently listed on the player page. Chess.com has reached out to Duda to clarify his participation in the event and has not yet received a response.
So joked, “And now they have a tough, meatgrinder tournament in Uzbekistan while I get to rest!” He said he will have a month off.
So Triumphs In Blitz Tiebreaks, Barely
The three players—So, Caruana, and Praggnanandhaa—played a single round-robin with a blitz time control of 5+2. In case of a tie, the tied players would play single armageddon games on a knockout basis. We did not reach any armageddon, as So won after the first set of games.
The champion suggested, perhaps in jest, to split the title in the way that GMs Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi did at the 2024 FIDE World Blitz Chess Championship. He shared in the interview that the players were okay with it, but IA Chris Bird did not allow it.
Praggnanandhaa won the first game, against Caruana, in the Italian Opening. The game featured more or less equal chances—Caruana was also better at several points with the bishop pair— but the American GM collapsed with 26…f4? 27.Nh5, giving Praggnanandhaa a winning attack in one move. The Indian GM won the game after six more moves.
So won the second game, against Praggnanandhaa with an incredibly quick counterattack. While 20…Rg8? added a third attacker on the g2-pawn, So understood that his counterattack was faster starting with 21.Ne2!. The g2-pawn could not be taken, and it was the black king who ended up in dire straits.
The last game featured what So called “my lucky variation” in the English Opening, as he remembered he won a game in this same line earlier this year in Zagreb against Caruana. Although he went down two pawns in an endgame, So had great defensive chances with all the heavy pieces still on the board. He also said, “I understood it’s all about the clock… I kept moving, like whatever!”
Caruana did have wins, namely 42.f6!, but his hesitation with little time cost him, and So said that once his opponent put his two rooks on the fourth rank he was confident. So’s piece activity eventually equalized the pawn count, and he made a draw by repetition to win the event.
Prizes & Grand Chess Tour Standings
So won the event, though Praggnanandhaa and Carauna still won $67,000 and a trip to Brazil.
You can see the GCT standings below, with the four players who qualified at the top.
Up next is the Finals next month!
The 2025 Sinquefield Cup, taking place from August 18 to 28 in St. Louis, is the last leg and final classical event before the Final of the 2025 Grand Chess Tour. It is a single round-robin with 10 players with a time control of 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game plus a 30-second increment starting on move one. It features a $350,000 prize fund.
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