GM Arjun Erigaisi is Indian number-one and world number-four again after beating GM Awonder Liang in round one of the Masters section of the Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters 2025. Arjun is joined in the lead by GM Vincent Keymer, who won a time-trouble thriller against GM Nihal Sarin, while GMs Vidit Gujrathi and Jorden van Foreest could both regret missed wins in one of the day’s three draws.
The Challengers saw GMs Leon Luke Mendonca, Diptayan Ghosh, and M Pranesh open with wins, defeating IM Harshavardhan G B, GM Harika Dronavalli, and GM Aryan Chopra respectively.
Round two will start on Friday, August 8, at 5:30 a.m. ET/11:30 CEST/3 p.m. IST.
Standings After Round 1: Challengers
Fire Off The Board As 3rd Edition Of Chennai Grand Masters Begins
The third edition of the Chennai Grand Masters was due to start on Wednesday but instead began a day later after a fire broke out in the venue, the Chennai Hyatt Regency Hotel, late on Tuesday night.
A fire broke out in the Hyatt Regency Hotel where the Chennai Grand Masters was due to take place. All the players are safe and have been moved to another hotel, but the 1st round has been postponed until Thursday, August 7 pic.twitter.com/vlLs8nh4OO
— chess24 (@chess24com) August 5, 2025
The fire was reported to have begun in a pantry storage area on the ninth floor at 12:30 a.m., but was put out an hour later with no one hurt. All the guests were evacuated to the ground floor, with the chess players then spending the night in another hotel before returning to the tournament venue the next day.
The Hyatt Regency holds a place in chess history as the site where GM Magnus Carlsen was thrown in the swimming pool in 2013 after clinching the world championship title for the first time by defeating GM Viswanathan Anand.
Finally World Champion! Thanks to all for your support! pic.twitter.com/ZGvHtzkZsf
— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) November 22, 2013
GM Anish Giri is one of the players following in those wet footsteps.
✌️👔✌️ pic.twitter.com/cGoLo2O0jE
— Anish Giri (@anishgiri) August 6, 2025
This is the third edition of the Chennai Grand Masters that had long been a dream of Indian chess but only suddenly came to fruition when GM Gukesh Dommaraju needed a tournament to gain FIDE Circuit points in 2023. The eight-player event was a huge success for the organizers, since Gukesh won (on tiebreaks ahead of Arjun), finished ahead of Giri in the Circuit, clinched a FIDE Candidates Tournament spot, won the Candidates, and went on to become the world chess champion at the age of 18.
The event returned in 2024 with the eight-player Masters joined by an eight-player Challengers, with GM Aravindh Chitharambam announcing himself on the world stage by winning the tournament on tiebreaks, ahead of GM Levon Aronian and, again, Arjun.
Arjun is back for this year’s third edition, where both sections have grown to 10 players and the prize fund has expanded to one crore Indian rupees, which is around 115,000 U.S. dollars, with around $30,000 for first place in the Masters.
Another innovation is that two players qualified for the Challengers via a Play-In on Chess.com open to all titled players. Pranesh and Ghosh booked their spots, while third-placed IM Harshavardhan also made it when GM Vladimir Fedoseev dropped out of the masters and was replaced by GM Karthikeyan Murali.
Due to some unforeseen circumstances, GM Vladimir Fedoseev has withdrawn from the 2025 Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters. As the top seed of the Challengers section, GM Karthikeyan Murali will now be replacing him in the tournament.
Round 1 starts in 2 days. Let the games begin!… pic.twitter.com/v11CW0m8pr
— Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters (@Chennai_GM) August 4, 2025
So let’s get to the round-one games.
Masters: Fire On Board As Arjun, Keymer Strike
There were only two quiet draws in round one of the Masters, with GM Ray Robson playing the Petroff and holding relatively easily against Giri, while GM Pranav Venkatesh, who qualified by winning the 2024 Challengers, was slightly worse but comfortably held against Karthikeyan in a position with the whole board blocked.
The third draw, Vidit-Van Foreest, was absolutely wild, however, with Van Foreest looking on course to create a masterpiece. 20…Ba6!! gave up the knight on d7 to plant a rook on e2.
The accuracy score of 99.5 told the story, as did the lack of time for Vidit. A recurring theme of the day would be pressure of the time control in Chennai, which gives the players 90 minutes and then no added time at move 40, except for the 30 seconds they pick up each move.
Everything looked to be going smoothly for the Dutchman, but with 24…Rxb2? it turned out he’d picked up a highly-poisoned pawn.
25.Rb1! left the home star suddenly on top. That was only the beginning of the twists, however, before the game eventually ended in what felt a fair outcome—a draw.
The remaining two games saw wins, one of which was for the tournament’s top seed and, after the game, the Indian number-one, since Arjun edged out GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu to move back to world number-four.
Arjun’s win over U.S. GM Awonder Liang came in a line where GM Tan Zhongyi had beaten GM Lei Tingjie with the black pieces to take third place at the recent FIDE Women’s World Cup. The game had also booked Tan’s place at the 2026 FIDE Women’s Candidates Tournament.
Liang was working at that tournament as a second for IM Carissa Yip, but despite at times coming close to getting enough counterplay he was put to the sword by Arjun in what is our Game of the Day. GM Rafael Leitao analyzes it below.
The day’s other winner was Keymer, who came out on top in a wild opening where neither player was in a rush to develop pieces and castle.
Here, after 16.Bh6, Nihal spent 17 minutes and opted for 16…dxe3? (16…Qd5!), which allowed Keymer to trade down into a winning endgame.
Nihal was also perilously low on the clock, but as we saw recently in Riyadh, he can play phenomenally well with little time. To say the 21-year-old Indian GM doesn’t look stressed when there are seconds left would be something of an understatement!
Nihal yawns after making his 30th move with 13 seconds to spare! pic.twitter.com/zS1VTiCKRc
— chess24 (@chess24com) August 7, 2025
The calm, combined with Keymer also getting down to seconds, made for a thrilling spectacle, but just when survival was within Nihal’s grasp he went for one tricky try with 49…Rh7?. It was the kind of move that could evoke sheer panic in the player with White and 41 seconds on his clock, but Keymer spotted it wasn’t working and executed the winning moves!
With 3 seconds to spare Nihal blunders, and a shocked Keymer spots the winning line! https://t.co/Djeb6gKu0f pic.twitter.com/4fPcRl68Us
— chess24 (@chess24com) August 7, 2025
A deserved win for Keymer, but Nihal showed he’s not going to be a pushover in Chennai.
That means we have two leaders after round one, and they both have Black in round two, with Van Foreest-Arjun and Pranav-Keymer among the match-ups to look forward to.
Challengers: Mendonca, Ghosh, Pranesh Lead
The top prize in the Challengers is just over $8,000, but it also offers a spot in next year’s Masters. The theme of the first round was how quickly positions can collapse. On move 21 Chopra needed to play 21…Re8!, preparing to meet 22.Bc5 with 22…Be7, but when he moved his queen instead he was lost almost on the spot and resigned against Pranesh five moves later in the day’s fastest game.
Harika looked to be close to making a draw against Diptayan, but one false rook move and she was suddenly in trouble and went on to lose to the qualifier. Harika is playing the event for a second year in a row, as is GM Vaishali Rameshbabu, who started with a solid draw against GM Iniyan P.
GM Adhiban (the Beast) Baskaran made a somewhat solid but just as effective draw after playing the Benko Gambit against top seed GM Abhimanyu Puranik, while the final win was for Mendonca, who finished runner-up in 2024.
Late-entry Harshavardhan showed he meant business by playing the combative Benoni with Black, but when he missed the last chance to play 34…b5! Mendonca was ruthless as he whipped up a mating attack.
So Mendonca, Pranesh, and Diptayan lead, but there are still eight rounds to go, with Diptayan-Pranesh among the pairings in round two.
How To Watch
The 3rd edition of the Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters is taking place August 7-15, 2025, in Chennai, India. There are two 10-play round-robins, the Masters and the Challengers, with 90 minutes for all moves, plus a 30-second increment from move 1. The top prize is ₹25,00,000, which is almost $30,000.
