2025 Spell Chess Championship: Moroni Wins Spell Chess Championship For Second Year Running

Italian GM Luca Moroni has once again proven his proficiency in chess variants by defending his title in the 2025 Chess.com Spell Chess Championship on Friday.

Moroni, who was the only GM to qualify for the knockout final for the second year running, defeated Luis Ignacio 3-2 in the grand final and claimed the $700 first prize. 

Patrik Saar and Ben Nordick finished third and fourth, and will receive $350 and $250 for their efforts, while the remaining finalists, Dmytro Lin, IM Yoseph Taher, Ethan Harrison, and NM Logan Shafer, rounded out the top eight.

Bracket

Standings

What Is Spell Chess?

Spell Chess is a variant born as a product of Chess.com’s partnership with Clash of Clans creators “Supercell,” and while most of chess’ regular rules apply, the variant allows players to cast two types of spells: jump and freeze.

Each player starts with five freezes and two jump spells. Players can cast one of the spells on a turn before they move a piece, and each spell has a three-turn cooldown.

Jump Spell

The jump spell is the simplest and most devastating of the two spells, allowing you to choose a piece of either color that you can jump over on a given turn. In Spell Chess, the king can be taken, so defenders beware, your usual defensive efforts may not be enough to stop a piece from leaping over and capturing your king.

Freeze Spell

The second spell freezes a 3×3 area of the board, and any piece in that area cannot move for the rest of that turn.

Below, Moroni freezes all of Black’s pieces that would normally be able to block Bb5+, and Black resigns. Unfortunately for Black, this resignation was premature… they could have counter-frozen Moroni’s bishop to avoid their king being captured.

Qualifiers: Specialists Hex Titled Players

GMs Benjamin Bok and Guha Mitrabha, who would be front-runners in most standard, online chess events, failed to qualify for the knockout. Further highlighting the difficulty of adjusting to Spell Chess, the 2023 winner, IM Nhat Minh To, also missed out.

Knockout: Moroni Dominates, Retains Title

The format for the knockout was a best-of-four, double-elimination bracket, and in the Winners’ Quarterfinals, three players, Moroni, Saar, and Ilin, won their matches 3-1.

Taher-Harrison was a tigher affair than the other matches, thanks to the tenacity of the latter—Harrison piled the pressure on Taher after winning in nine moves with Black in the first game. An enterprising bishop sacrifice on move seven was complemented by a freeze spell, and Taher was forced to use a freeze spell of his own to survive. 

Harrison then continued with a brilliant queen sacrifice, leaving Taher with no choice but to expose himself to a deadly discovered attack, or, as it happened in the game, a jump spell.

Taher eventually bounced back and prevailed in a 1+2 sudden-death bullet tiebreaker, booking his spot in the Winners’ Semifinals. He then came face-to-face with the highest-rated player in the field and defending champion, Moroni.

Although Taher managed to secure a win in the second game, Moroni’s class shone through, and the match turned into a fairly one-sided exhibition of wizardry. See if you can spot the move (and spell) Moroni used to checkmate Taher in one of their encounters below (Black to play).

In the other Winners’ Semifinal, Saar dueled Ilin and upset his opponent with a 2.5-1.5 score. The celebrations were short-lived, though, as he prepared to come face-to-face with a rampaging Moroni.

The Italian GM was comprehensive in this match and won 2.5-0.5, and even earned style points for stunning commentators WGM Dina Belenkaya and WIM Ayelen Martinez at the end of the fourth game.

Despite Moroni’s dominance, a familiar, albeit surprising foe awaited him in the grand final… none other than his Winners Quarterfinals opponent Ignacio, whose consecutive decimations of Harrison, Ilin, Nordick, and Saar in the Losers Bracket earned him a grand final berth.

Ignacio got off to a perfect start in the Grand Final, winning the first two games. Game one culminated in a moment that even had variant specialists checking the rule book. Ignacio cheekily froze all of Moroni’s movable pieces, and Moroni’s time drained.

Or so it seemed. What Moroni and many didn’t realize was that White had two legal moves, 34. jump@f5 f6 and 34. jump@h3 h4.

Boasting a 2-0 lead, Ignacio would have been bullish about his chances of completing a Cinderella story in this year’s championship, but Moroni had other ideas. Within a few minutes, the defending champion clapped back with two clean wins and took the match into overtime.

A tournament deciding 1+2 game ensued, and with momentum on his side, Moroni never looked in doubt. 

Reminiscent of his 2024 victory, Moroni humbly noted that he could have lost several of his matches if luck hadn’t been on his side.

When quizzed by Belenkaya about whether it was a smooth ride to the championship, Moroni stated the following:

“I was blundering everything; those guys were clearly more prepared than me in the openings. I had absolutely no clue what to do; I was just copying the others. It looks like the Caro-Kann is the top choice for whatever reason; I don’t even know why. But that’s how I was playing, and I was hoping for tricks.”

Congratulations to Italian GM Luca Moroni on casting the right spells to win the 2025 @Chesscom #SpellChess Championship! pic.twitter.com/kX6KfhSbrI

— chess24 (@chess24com) August 15, 2025

The next variant to take center stage in Chess.com’s Community Championships is the viral sensation, Duck Chess, which will commence on September 4.