GM Magnus Carlsen lost the first game against GM Fabiano Caruana in the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Finals, but then won on demand with Black to force tiebreaks. There, he won both blitz games and already clinched the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour title by reaching the Semifinals, as he’s uncatchable in the tour standings.
GMs Javokhir Sindarov, Vincent Keymer, and Levon Aronian respectively defeated GMs Parham Maghsoodloo (2-0), Arjun Erigaisi (1.5-0.5), and Hans Niemann (3-1).
Day three, featuring the Semifinals, will be on Wednesday, December 10, starting at 6 a.m. ET / 12:00 CET / 4:30 p.m. IST.
Nobody’s eliminated. The players who lost their first match drop down to the Lower Bracket, where they fight for places fifth (worth $40,000) through eighth ($15,000).
Though Carlsen has taken the $100,000 bonus prize, there is still $200,000 on offer for the player to win this event.
Upper Bracket
Lower Bracket
Two of the matches—Sindarov vs. Maghsoodloo and Arjun vs. Keymer—were decided in two games, while the other two went to tiebreaks. The time control for the two regular games was the slower 30+15, though we still saw time trouble.
Sindarov 2-0 Maghsoodloo
The nightmare continued for Maghsoodloo, who lost all seven of his games on the previous day and then lost both games on Tuesday. Sindaron swept the match, in the most one-sided performance.
The Iranian GM started well and, after a successful opening, found the only winning idea of 16.Bxf6!!. In better form, with more confidence, he would conduct this sort of an attack like a fish in water, but he quickly went for the queen trade and most of his advantage evaporated.
In the endgame, Sindarov, from an initially worse position, outplayed his opponent.
With the white pieces in game two, Sindarov maintained control of the position (more or less, as it’s Chess960) and ultimately won an exchange and the game.
Arjun 0.5-1.5 Keymer
After a—relatively, for Chess960—clean draw, Keymer took the match in game two, without needing tiebreaks. Arjun at one point had a winning advantage but had to find 18…e5! to fire up the attack. He later played the exact same pawn break, but under different circumstances, and in the game it blundered an exchange.
Keymer summarized it: “I think in the last game I had a very nice position out of the opening, then messed it up somewhere between a lot and completely.”
Keymer, who reported feeling sick the previous day, said he’s starting to feel better. “I played better chess, I didn’t blunder pieces or pawns just randomly, so I also have the feeling that I can slowly trust my calculation again.”
The next two matches lasted four games, with 5+2 blitz tiebreaks.
Carlsen 3-1 Caruana
The titanic clash between world numbers one and three featured a seismic comeback. Caruana won game one and, unable to hold at least a draw in the second, succumbed to three losses in a row.
Caruana won the first game with the black pieces after what Carlsen called a “brain hemorrhage” and a “complete and utter meltdown” as he was missing several moves. After 21…Kh8!, the white position collapsed like a house of cards.
Game two was the Game of the Day, which Carlsen won on demand with the black pieces, though he wasn’t too happy at the start: “I was really pissed that we had to wait like an hour and a half for the next game,” though he said in the end “it was not such a bad thing.”
The turning point came right after the queen trade, when Carlsen found 27…a6! with the idea that after 28.Na3 he could temporarily sacrifice his bishop on c6, winning back his piece in two moves. Carlsen said, “Overall, I think it was a deserved victory in a very hard-fought game,” and GM Rafael Leitao analyzes the full game below.
Curiously, on move 54 Carlsen reached for his king and suddenly realized 54…Kg6 would allow White to sacrifice his rook and achieve a stalemate. Shaking his head, he gave a check and eliminated even the whiff of a blunder.
From there, Carlsen took over. After playing longer time controls, he did say that adjusting to 5+2 was a challenge: “I had to tell myself several times, make a move, c’mon, what are you doing.” He explained that one cannot rely on their intuition in Chess960, as the pieces are on slightly different squares than one is used to, but “fortunately when it came down to a bullet scramble I’m a bit better than they are.”
Caruana could not keep up on the clock and collapsed in the time scramble the first game, just barely able to rattle off the moves.
Carlsen was already borderline winning by move 10 in the last game, where he pressed an overwhelming space advantage to another full point.
Carlsen will play Sindarov next and said, “He looks very good right now, so l certainly need to play much better than in the first ganme, at least.”
Aronian 3-1 Niemann
After Sindarov selected Maghsoodloo as his opponent, Aronian had the second choice. He said that choosing between Keymer and Niemann came with a lot of pressure and “I decided to give the pressure to somebody else,” letting his wife, Ani, choose his opponent for him.
She selected Niemann, though he said he would have picked the same considering Keymer’s performance in the first Freestyle event this year.
All the games were crazy, even if the first two ended in draws. He curtly summarized them: “He was in trouble in the first game, I was in trouble in this one. Some tactics were missed and then it ended in a draw.”
Aronian echoed Carlsen’s thoughts about Chess960 blitz: “I think Freestyle Chess is such a difficult game and to play it in blitz is very brutal.” Game Review concurs, as you can see by the several red moves in game one, as well as the accuracy scores.
Both players traded losing mistakes in a mad time scramble, but it was Aronian who came out on top. Really, either player could have won this one.
Aronian won the second game, though once again it was truly an all-results-possible ordeal in the time scramble.
Aronian will play Keymer next and said, “I think I passed through the difficult stage… fighting for the top four is already very good. I am just going to relax and play Freestyle Chess.”
I am just going to relax and play Freestyle Chess.
—Levon Aronian
How to Rewatch
The Freestyle Chess Grand Slam South Africa is the last event of the multi-million dollar Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour and determines this year’s Freestyle Champion, who earns the $200,000 first prize. The event takes place at the Grootbos Private Nature Reserve from December 8 to 11. All games are played in the freestyle chess variant.
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