GM Vincent Keymer won the Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters 2025 by a full two points after beating GM Ray Robson in the final round, add crossing the 2750 Elo mark to his achievements. GM Anish Giri was the surprise player to sneak into second place, despite starting the tournament with eight draws, by winning a thriller against GM Jorden van Foreest that could easily have gone either way. Giri had better tiebreaks than GMs Arjun Erigaisi and Karthikeyan Murali, who made a tense draw in the last round.
The Challengers witnessed an extraordinary finish, as GM Pranesh M lost to bottom-seed IM Harshavardhan G B, but then won anyway without a playoff after both GMs Leon Luke Mendonca and Abhimanyu Puranik crashed to painful defeats. GM Adhiban Baskaran celebrated his birthday with second place after being the one to beat Mendonca.
Masters Final Standings
Keymer ultimately finished a full two points ahead of the chasing pack.
Challengers Final Standings
Pranesh clinched a spot in the 2026 Masters after the three leaders all lost on the final day.
Masters: Keymer Wins With Flourish, Giri Takes 2nd After Thriller
With Keymer having wrapped up tournament victory with a round to spare, the final round could easily have been a damp squib in the Masters, but instead we got some great games and even greater drama.
Keymer ended on a high by beating Robson to finish with a performance rating of 2917, earning him 20.9 rating points to not only secure his spot in the world top-10 but cross 2750.
“At least this time that I’m out I have a worthy successor!” said Giri about being edged out of the top-10, while Keymer summed up with, “I think it’s the highest performance I’ve ever had in classical chess, and also just a very nice feeling to play good chess.”
I think it’s the highest performance I’ve ever had in classical chess.
—Vincent Keymer
Giri credited his rival’s success to how well he’d done in Freestyle Chess in 2025, including a win at the Grand Slam Weissenhaus, noting: “This Freestyle will probably go down in history, when it all collapses, as the thing that turned Vincent into a monster!”
This Freestyle will probably go down in history… as the thing that turned Vincent into a monster!
—Anish Giri
Giri elaborated on his theory:
He was always very reliant on openings, I thought, and he was having a very narrow repertoire with both colors. It was crazy narrow, particularly in rapid and blitz but also in classical, and usually you do that when you feel you are dependent on the opening, you have to play your lines otherwise you’re not very good. So in Freestyle, Vincent must have seen that without any openings he’s very good, and now his play is completely different from how he used to play before. He’s no longer as predictable and he wins a lot of games, also with Black, here. Also the confidence boost must have helped him!
The theory referred to the final round game, where Keymer got into trouble in the opening. He later explained that he’d planned to play solidly but was surprised with a line that GM Kazybek Nogerbek had used to beat him in the World Team Rapid Championship in London earlier this year. 5…g6?! was played simply to dodge main-line preparation, and Giri asked Keymer to provide him with a screenshot of his coach GM Peter Leko‘s face when looking at the position after 8…a6.
“If he was my coach, I would never do this to him!” said Giri. Keymer responded, “I think you would be his perfect student, you’re so much alike in your opinions!”
All of Keymer’s pieces ended up on questionable squares, but the way he regrouped a key knight and bishop in particular was brilliant, and even Keymer himself was surprised at how easily winning his position turned out to be after the queens were traded off.
So, while Keymer ended his tournament in the best possible way, that still left the question of who would take second place.
On the surface, that looked like a battle between Karthikeyan and Arjun, but a tense, double-edged battle ended in a draw after it was Karthikeyan who had the better chances.
Arjun started well and could have overtaken GM Fabiano Caruana to move up to world number-three if he had beaten GM Nihal Sarin in round four. Instead, he suffered an unnecessary loss and, with health issues, drew his way to the end of the tournament, ultimately dropping below World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju and GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov to world number-seven. For Karthikeyan, meanwhile, it was a fantastic result, especially considering he was supposed to play in the Challengers before GM Vladimir Fedoseev dropped out at the last moment. He’d lost to only one player—Keymer.
The person who ultimately took second, level on points with Arjun and Karthikeyan, was Giri, who didn’t even lose to Keymer but had made only draws… until the final game!
https://t.co/J5EqKC48Hu pic.twitter.com/4Tz0CvUe0t
— Anish Giri (@anishgiri) August 15, 2025
It was fantastic drama almost from the start, as Van Foreest blundered with 12.Bd2? (Giri: “I was extremely happy!”), allowing 12…c4!.
Giri was on top, but miscalculated a detail, fell into time trouble, and things lurched out of control. We reached peak drama with 30.Bxh6? by Van Foreest, an objectively losing move. Would Giri find 30…Ng8! with just over a minute on his clock? He did pick up the knight, but instead opted for 30…Nd7!?.
With 6 seconds to spare Giri moves the right piece… but to the wrong square! 30…Ng8! was winning, while after 30…Nd7 Jorden has an edge: https://t.co/3kMbCwauwJ pic.twitter.com/ZDNianob2n
— chess24 (@chess24com) August 15, 2025
“It’s so dirty, I was seduced by this!” said Giri, who had foreseen 31.Bc1? (31.Be3!) 31…Nc5! and Van Foreest, to his horror, realized he was lost.
The problem for the Dutch number-two was that 32.Qxb4 runs into 32…Qxc2 and 33.Qh4+ is not delivering checkmate due to 33…Qh7!, defending everything. Van Foreest still had 20 minutes left on his clock but burned it up moving through the stages of grief.
That’s our Game of the Day, which GM Dejan Bojkov has analyzed below.
Despite a low-key tournament, Giri had better tiebreaks than Arjun or Karthikeyan and finished second—or, as the organizers described it, as first runner-up!
⚡ 1st Runner-Up ⚡
Anish Giri finishes as the 1st Runner-Up in the Masters Category at the Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters 2025!
A commanding performance among the world’s finest minds. ♟️🔥@anishgiri @chess24com @chesscom_in @QBResearch @ChessbaseIndia… pic.twitter.com/5DIIHC4H4o
— Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters (@Chennai_GM) August 15, 2025
GM Awonder Liang vs. GM Vidit Gujrathi was the only quiet draw of the round, while Nihal finished on 50 percent with three wins as well as three losses after scoring a fine win over GM Pranav Venkatesh. Here are the final stages of that game:
Challengers: Pranesh Loses… But Wins
In the end, as expected before the day began, 18-year-old Pranesh won the Challengers and clinched a place in the 2026 Masters, to the delight of his fans, friends, and coach GM Ramesh R B.
Thanks @itherocky for the picture!
Thanks to Pranesh’s sponsors @CholaChess @KanikaSubbiah @Vellayan_S for being the backbone behind Pranesh over the years 🙏
Behind every successful sportsman/woman there is a small team with skin in the game.
Congratulations respect to his… https://t.co/6QRHHvVy0e
— Ramesh RB (@Rameshchess) August 15, 2025
The way it happened, however, was insane.
Playing White, facing Harshavardhan, and leading by half a point, Pranesh “only” needed to beat the underdog to guarantee first place, while a draw would mean at least a playoff. Instead, he got nothing out of the opening. Rather than accepting that fact, he pushed, only to end up with his queen trapped.
By the end, he found himself allowing checkmate on the board.
That result was a huge chance for Mendonca, who began the day half a point behind and objectively had a winning position against birthday boy Adhiban. “The Beast,” who surprisingly was unbeaten in the first eight rounds, was right at home in the chaos, however, and it was no great surprise when he found his way out of trouble.
A draw, and a playoff, looked to be in the cards, but then Mendonca collapsed with 39…Rd7?. Adhiban found the winning moves to kill his opponent’s dream.
That still wasn’t the end of the drama, however. Abhimanyu also went into the day trailing by half a point, and although he looked out of contention for most of the round as GM Iniyan P was winning their game, that changed when an endgame detail was missed.
Abhimanyu had a holdable position and was on the verge of a playoff.
There would be yet another twist, however, as Abhimanyu lost his way and allowed the white king to get to its dream square on h4. The rest was easy for Iniyan.
Pranesh had thus clinched victory despite all three leaders losing. There were echoes of the 2013 FIDE Candidates, when both tournament leaders GMs Magnus Carlsen and Vladimir Kramnik lost in the final round, and this year’s Tata Steel Chess Masters, when both GMs Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and Gukesh lost.
Pranesh will play the Masters in 2026, and it’s also noteworthy that Adhiban “did a Giri” to sneak into the runners-up spot, with an unbeaten +3.
And that’s all for the 2025 Chennai Grand Masters—we hope you enjoyed the show!
OMG what a great picture!! Will they upload it?? pic.twitter.com/l4VzJOswPD
— Anish Giri (@anishgiri) August 15, 2025
How To Rewatch
The third edition of the Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters took place August 7-15, 2025, in Chennai, India. There were two 10-player round-robins, the Masters and the Challengers, with 90 minutes for all moves, plus a 30-second increment from move 1. The top prize was ₹25,00,000, which is almost $30,000.
