The Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2025 is ongoing and coming to an end on Friday, 14 February. A total of 5 grand slam tours will take place in different cities throughout the year. The first leg of the tournament is currently in progress in Germany and in a stunning turn of events, Gukesh’s campaign has been thrown into chaos.
The 18-year-old player faced all other nine players in the Round-Robin Stage where each faced one another to ensure equal opportunity to compete and level the scores. However, he could not secure a single win in 9 matches and was left disappointed by 7 draws and 2 losses against World Number 1 Magnus Carlsen and World Number 7 Alireza Firouzja.
Alireza defeated him in round 2 and again suffered a loss to Carlsen in the final round. After the match, Carlsen shared that he (Gukesh) never had a realistic chance to win despite initially looking like he could take the match to a draw.
After being asked by an interviewer if maybe the Indian chess player wants to play and beat Magnus, he said “No, I don’t know. I think, honestly, there was not a single point in the game where it was realistic that he could play for a win. That hasn’t stopped him from playing for a win in the past, but I think the practical chances were always with me, especially with the time.”
According to a new rule implemented in the game, a player who finished top could pick his opponent who rank between 5 to 8. Fabiano was in second place when he decided to pick Gukesh as his opponent who finished at 8.
Explaining why he picked him over Abdusattorov, he said, “I don’t know, it’s not like there’s a huge qualitative difference. Of course, Gukesh has more experience in terms of playing for the World Championship, that’s a wealth of experience and winning the World Championship. And he’s played more high-stakes games compared to Nodirbek Abdusattorov.”
“So it’s a bit of a toss-up, you know? I think for me Gukesh was a bit more of an unknown than Nodirbek Abdusattorov in some ways, So I thought, okay, if it’s between Gukesh and Noderbeg or Hikaru, I’ll probably pick Gukesh in that case,” he added.
After facing Caruana on February 9, in round 1 of the quarterfinals, the player suffered another loss in 40 moves. He made a critical error on the 33rd move and his queen was stuck on the corner of the board on h11 square for 17 moves.
This mistake sealed a victory for Fabiano in the 40th move regarding which he said, “The win is great of course, especially in a game like that where anything could have happened, I could have definitely lost if things hadn’t gone my way, I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe I could play safer, but sometimes it feels like you should also take control of your own destiny.”
Now Gukesh is set to face him again in round 2 of the quarterfinals and this is his last chance to settle the score. If he loses this match, he will be eliminated from the tournament which will be a huge setback for the young player. The match is scheduled for 10 February, at 7 a.m. ET / 13:00 CET / 5:30 p.m. IST. The replayed match will be available to stream for Indian audiences on ChessBase India’s YouTube channel.
This could be a turning point in the series if he manages to secure a win, however unlikely. He would force a tie-breaker against Fabiano Caruana to decide who will go to the semi-finals. The winner of Sindarov vs Nakamura match would face the winner in the semi-finals of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2025.
Also Read: D Gukesh Opens Up About Life After Becoming The Youngest Chess World Champion
