There’s no stopping for GM Alireza Firouzja, who won his fifth game in a row on Thursday at the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League 2025, taking down his compatriot GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. With draws on all other boards, this game helped Triveni Continental Kings to beat co-leaders upGrad Mumba Masters 9-5.
Going into the second half of the round-robin stage, back-to-back champion Triveni Continental Kings continues to be the favorite for the 2025 title in Mumbai. upGrad Mumba Masters is tied for second place with Ganges Grandmasters, who narrowly beat Fyers American Gambits as GM Javokhir Sindarov‘s Black win over GM Richard Rapport was worth one point more than GM Bibisara Assaubayeva‘s White win against IM Polina Shuvalova.
PBG Alaskan Knights finally got rid of their zero in the leaderboard as the team won its first match, scoring 12-8 vs. Alpine SG Pipers. In a clash that saw no draws, the Knights won their white games on the top four boards.
Day six starts on Friday, December 19, at 5:00 a.m. ET / 11:00 CET / 3:30 p.m. IST.
The Ganges Grandmasters caught UpGrad Mumba Masters in second place and are now in full contention again for the top two spots that will play in the final, after 10 rounds have been played.
upGrad Mumba Masters 5-9 Triveni Continental Kings
It looks like the London Super Rapidplay earlier this month, played after the London Chess Classic’s Elite tournament, was a good warmup for Firouzja’s chess in the rapid time control. After five rounds, the French-Iranian GM still sits on a perfect score, which is even more impressive if you take into account who his opponents were. He’ll face all of them again in the second half of the round-robin, so let’s see how far he can go…
Alireza Firouzja collects the perfect set, beating all 5 of his rival Icons in Mumbai! 🤯https://t.co/QBxSADKQpC pic.twitter.com/1eKC9No10N
— chess24 (@chess24com) December 18, 2025
His match-winning game against Vachier-Lagrave started with a Najdorf, a lifelong love of the player playing… White this time. MVL’s modest 6.Be2 allowed a transposition into the Classical Scheveningen, and a long and interesting maneuvering game unfolded.
At some point (29.c3), Vachier-Lagrave weakened his queenside a bit too much and Firouzja got an edge, but some time later it was more or less equal again. When the players were both under a minute on the clock, it was Firouzja who saw things more clearly:
As said, all five other games in this clash between the two dominant teams ended peacefully, and four of these five were also fairly quiet affairs. That was not the case for the last board, where GM Marc’Andria Maurizzi allowed a nice little combination where he could have played on with an exchange sacrifice. GM Bardiya Daneshvar found it and forced a perpetual:
Alpine SG Pipers 8-12 PBG Alaskan Knights
The second match of the day was almost the complete opposite, with no draws at all and PBG Alaskan Knights finally scoring their first victory. It definitely helped that GM Gukesh Dommaraju won his first game, after two draws and two losses. GMs Arjun Erigaisi, Leinier Dominguez and Kateryna Lagno won their first games as well, and that made all the difference.
The world champion beat GM Fabiano Caruana in an excellent game where he built up the pressure more and more, playing on both sides of the board:
GM Arjun Erigaisi‘s quick win against GM Anish Giri is definitely worth checking out as well. It’s always fun to see a usually quiet (and very classical) opening like the Queen’s Gambit Declined quickly turning into a razor-sharp fight when White goes for an early g2-g4.
This coffee-house style of play, only once done before in this specific position (by reigning 50+ World Champion Victor Mikhalevski, who played it in 2017), was quite successful for Arjun:
Let’s also have a look at a third game from this match, analyzed by GM Rafael Leitao below. It’s instructive to see the domination of Dominguez’s bishops against GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu‘s two knights, culminating in Zugzwang:
Ganges Grandmasters 8-7 FYERS American Gambits
On top board, GM Viswanathan Anand played well and was better for most of the game, but couldn’t break through GM Hikaru Nakamura‘s solid setup. Eventually it was Sindarov’s win as Black, yielding four points, that turned out to be crucial.
The Uzbek started with a loss but has now won four games in a row. Today, he was well prepared for Rapport’s London System and easily parried the Hungarian’s gambit-style play:
Playing for the opposing team, Sindarov’s girlfriend Assaubayeva scored a win for FYERS American Gambits but that was only worth three points because she had White. This way, match victory went to Ganges Grandmasters with the smallest possible margin. It was Shuvalova’s first loss in the tournament.
Friday will start 1.5 hours earlier as there won’t be three but four matchups as the second half of the round-robin takes off.
The Tech Mahindra Global Chess League 2025 consists of a six-team double round-robin group stage and a final contested by the top two teams. In each match, all members of a team play with the same color, with four points for a win with Black and three for a win with White. All games have a 20-minute time control, with a two-second increment from move 41.
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