GM Alireza Firouzja won his Speed Chess Championship 2025 quarterfinal match against GM Ian Nepomniachtchi 19-9 to book his ticket to the Live Finals in London. There, he will face GM Hikaru Nakamura in the Semifinals.
The last quarterfinal match will be GM Hans Niemann vs. GM Denis Lazavik. That’s on Friday, November 21, starting at 1 p.m. ET / 19:00 CET / 11:30 p.m. IST. The winner of that match will face GM Magnus Carlsen in London.
2025 Speed Chess Championship Bracket
There’s just one quarterfinal left. If Niemann wins it, it’s deja vu: we’ll have the same four players who competed in the Live Finals last year in Paris.
Firouzja 19-9 Nepomniachtchi
Given as an overwhelming favorite, Firouzja was predicted to win in every single segment with a 76 percent chance of winning the match. Unsurprisingly, bullet chess was identified as the biggest difference between the two.
The prediction was more or less correct, except that Firouzja scored better in every segment than predicted. He won the 5+1 section by two points, the 3+1 by three points, and the 1+1 by a whopping five points. He wins $7,500 plus another $5,089.29 by win percentage, while Nepomniachtchi earns $2,410.71 for his efforts.
5+1: Firouzja 5.5-3.5 Nepomniachtchi
True to his style, Nepomniachtchi was up on the clock in most of the games. In the beginning, Firouzja struggled to convert advantages when playing on just a few seconds, but as the match continued, Nepomniachtchi’s quick pace backfired as well.
Firouzja won a very shaky game one, completely outplaying Nepomniachtchi but having only the one-second increment to convert the advantage. 23.Rf5!! was a beautiful attacking resource, not played but pointed out by the commentators, although many other moves won more prosaically. Firouzja won his opponent’s queen, lost control, but finally converted the full point.
The next three games were drawn. Firouzja, up a pawn in the next game but with little time, bailed out with a repetition of moves. The next game was also a draw by repetition, where Nepomniachtchi sacrificed the exchange and had full compensation.
In the third draw, Nepomniachtchi’s time usage backfired. He won a pawn and consolidated it, but then rushed a breakthrough with 17.e5? and allowed counterplay.
Firouzja then took a two-point lead when his opponent allowed a one-move fork. He won the exchange and, this time, didn’t let the clock situation affect the result.
Nepomniachtchi had a shining chance to score the first win in the next game. There, he played the decisive 41.Na5, got up, and walked out of the room. He returned smiling and confident, but Firouzja slipped out and ultimately drew a rook endgame after 138 moves.
Nepomniachtchi plays the winning move, walks out of the room, and returns with a smile!https://t.co/YTid8Nlpbf#SpeedChess pic.twitter.com/N2uRfNthzq
— chess24 (@chess24com) November 20, 2025
After another draw (the fifth), Nepomniachtchi won his first game of the match. After he pre-moved 21.g5??, (“Too fast, too furious,” said FM James Canty III) Firouzja had a winning position, but controlling it in a blitz game proved to be easier said than done. Given a chance, Nepomniachtchi released a flurry of sacrifices to open the enemy king, prompting GM David Howell to exclaim, “That was world-class attacking. Sac, sac, mate, basically.”
Despite Firouzja winning the match, we’ve given this the Game of the Day distinction, and it’s analyzed by GM Rafael Leitao below. (It will be added later.)
Still, Firouzja won with the knight and extra pawn vs. bishop in the last game to hold onto the two-point lead.
3+1: Firouzja 6.5-3.5 Nepomniachtchi
Firouzja rode the momentum and ballooned his lead to five points in the next segment. He switched his black openings from the Ruy Lopez (and one Petroff) to the Caro-Kann, and it worked wonders. The pattern for the first six games was: win with Black, draw with White against the Petroff and Najdorf (though not for a lack of fighting).
The French number-one won the first game with a crushing attack in a sharp, opposite-sides castling position, taking a three-point lead.
The slightly dubious sidelines in the Tal Variation, with 4…h6 or 4…Qc7 or 4…a6 rather than the main line of 4…h5, would net Firouzja many more points in this match. He explained, “Objectively, White is better there. The engine probably shows like +1 or something, but in blitz it’s all about knowing the structures and I think I knew the positions better than him.” Conversely, he said that Nepomniachtchi showed better understanding in the Ruy Lopez.
The openings don’t matter so much in blitz, Firouzja explained, and that you can often slip out of bad positions if things go wrong. He figured, “I just thought if I go sharp enough, I will have good chances,” and it worked.
I just thought if I go sharp enough, I will have good chances.
—Alireza Firouzja
After a draw, Firouzja won again with the black pieces in another Caro to take a four-point lead. Tilt clearly crept in for the Russian GM as he blundered his queen in one move—presumably after hallucinating that it was a move repetition.
Nepomniachtchi blunders his queen and cannot believe it! Firouzja takes a four-point lead.https://t.co/WsTpW2VMpJ#SpeedChess pic.twitter.com/R6KcBb3JiR
— chess24 (@chess24com) November 20, 2025
After another draw against Nepomniachtchi’s solid Petroff, Firouzja took a five-point lead with another crushing black attack. It was followed, according to the pattern, by another draw, but one where both players missed a one-move knight fork. 55.b4? was played instead of 55.Nf5, using the pin.
The fourth time with White, again in the Tal Variation, Nepomniachtchi stopped the bleeding with, finally, a draw. Then, a game later, Nepomniachtchi found a nice tactic to win a pawn, but Firouzja slipped away again.
Nepomniachtchi finally scored his second win of the match in the penultimate 3+1 game, using what looks like a yo-yo maneuver with his queen—Qa4 to d1 and finally to b3—to trap his opponent’s pieces.
The win was short-lived, however, as Firouzja won an easy-looking last game to take a five-point lead, ahead of the bullet segment, his specialty.
1+1: Firouzja 7-2 Nepomniachtchi
It became quickly apparent in the bullet segment that Nepomniachtchi wasn’t going to win the match. After a draw in game one, Firouzja won the next three in a row. Nepomniachtchi could only smile as he blundered a rook in the second of those.
A game later, Nepomniachtchi sacrificed a piece but got almost nothing for it and resigned after White’s 16th move.
The chances came up for Nepomniachtchi, like in the following game, but it’s hard to stay alert at the tail end of a match that’s not going well. 47.Rxf6!! would have been a nice find, with a devastating attack, if it were played. Instead, Black went on to win another long game.
When the smoke cleared, Firouzja finished with a 10-point lead in the match. It was a convincing and one-sided victory.
In 2025, Firouzja made it to the Final against Carlsen, but the world number-one won with a monstrous 23.5-7.5 score. In the 2025 Esports World Cup, more recently, they played another Grand Final match that Carlsen also won 2-0.
Firouzja will have another chance this year, and said, “It will be not easy to beat Magnus, but first I think the job will be done to qualify for EWC, so that’s the first important thing.” The top three finishers in the SCC will qualify for the 2026 Esports World Cup.
Firouzja has also taken a break in over-the-board chess lately. He didn’t participate in the (still ongoing) 2025 FIDE World Cup and confirmed that, for private reasons, he won’t participate in the 2025 World Rapid and Blitz Championships held at the end of December.
Up next, we will find out whether it’s Niemann or Lazavik who gets to play Carlsen in London. Niemann looks to be a slight favorite, but Lazavik has slain many beasts before.
The Speed Chess Championship, which starts on October 12 and culminates with Live Finals on February 8, 2026 in London, is Chess.com’s most important speed chess event. Some of the biggest names in chess compete to determine the best speed chess player in the world. The games are played with time controls of 5+1, 3+1, and 1+1. The prize fund is $250,000.
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