GM Hou Yifan‘s 20-move win over GM Kateryna Lagno gave GM Fabiano Caruana‘s Alpine SG Pipers a spot in the final of the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League 2025 despite the team suffering defeat. Their key rivals, GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave‘s upGrad Mumba Masters, missed out after losing 10-9 to GM Alireza Firouzja‘s Triveni Continental Kings, who finished an astonishing nine points clear.
World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju‘s PBG Alaskan Knights will take on GM Viswanathan Anand‘s Ganges Grandmasters in the match for third place.
The 10th and final day of the Global Chess League begins on Tuesday, December 23, at 5:00 a.m. ET / 11:00 CET / 3:30 p.m. IST.
The Triveni Continental Kings demolished the field in the round-robin, while three teams tied for second place on 15 match points and were separated by game points.
Ganges Grandmasters 12-3 Fyers American Gambits
On paper, this looked like a quiet warm-up to the day, with nothing at stake as far as the battle for first place went. The American Gambits were already out of contention, while the Ganges Grandmasters would need a crushing win and a lot of luck to reach the final.
As it happened, however, Anand’s team came within a whisker of making the final. They won three games, including a win for 20-year-old birthday boy GM Raunak Sadhwani, and would have reached the final if they’d won one more game. That very nearly happened, since they had huge advantages at some point in all three drawn games. Anand missed 23.f4!, which would have put him on top against GM Hikaru Nakamura…
…and ultimately took a draw in a position a pawn up. Nakamura recapped the game.
IM Polina Shuvalova let a huge edge slip against GM Bibisara Assaubayeva, while the most dramatic miss was a one-move chance for GM Javokhir Sindarov to grab a win after a difficult game against GM Richard Rapport. 57…Rxd5?? was a howler, but with five seconds on his clock Sindarov didn’t spot a simple forced win.
That result meant the end of the road for the American Gambits, with Nakamura now able to return to his wife and new-born child for Christmas.
I had a great time competing in the @GCLlive event here in Mumbai even if it wasn’t meant to be for the team. I also had the opportunity to meet Akash Ambani the other day. pic.twitter.com/lMk807nEmB
— Hikaru Nakamura (@GMHikaru) December 22, 2025
For the Ganges Grandmasters it wasn’t quite enough to reach the final, but they’ll play for third place.
Triveni Continental Kings 10-9 upGrad Mumba Masters
The upGrad Mumba Masters were the second best team for most of the event, as witnessed by their 92 game points, but they were let down by losing all four matches against the teams that reached the final. All four losses were narrow, and none more so than the last, where two wins with the black pieces, including a sixth of the event for GM Bardiya Daneshvar, were outweighed by three wins for the runaway leaders.
It could easily have gone differently, with Firouzja’s bold play against Vachier-Lagrave carrying serious risks before being richly rewarded.
One finish was brutal, with GM Zhu Jiner (four wins, one loss, five draws), catching out GM Koneru Humpy.
That eighth win in ten matches was just some icing on the cake for the Triveni Continental Kings, while it was a bitter pill for the upGrad Mumba Masters to swallow. A day they’d begun with excellent chances of reaching the final had ended with them missing out even on a playoff for third place.
Alpine SG Pipers 6-11 PBG Alaskan Knights
The Alpine SG Pipers went into this match knowing they no longer needed to win to reach the final, but they did need to rack up some game points to ensure their tiebreaker was better than that of the Ganges Grandmasters. Six draws would have done, but no match had ended in all draws this year, and this was no exception, as the Alaskan Knights won on the top boards.
Gukesh pounced to win a pawn against Caruana with a tactic that was deeper than it looked, and then, after some bumpy patches, went on to win in style.
The Alpine Pipers risked disaster, but, not for the first time in the last few days, Women’s number one Hou came to the rescue. In fact she settled nerves early on, with GM Daniil Dubov commenting, “It’s probably better not to play a move than to play 7…h6.”
Hou welcomed the chance to launch her g-pawn toward the black king and went on to win a hugely important miniature, her fourth win in a row after a slow start to the tournament. That’s our Game of the Day, which GM Rafael Leitao has analyzed below.
In the end it was a perfect match for both teams, with the Pipers reaching the final and the Knights sealing a spot in the third place match.
The final day will see each match played out over two mini-matches with reversed colors. Will Firouzja’s Triveni Continental Kings make it three titles in three seasons, or will Caruana’s Alpine SG Pipers snatch victory on the final day? We’ll soon find out!
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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