The Week in Chess

1. 21st Delhi Open 2025 - Games and Results

   The 21st Delhi Open took place Sat 7th to Sat 14th Jun 2025. Abhijeet Gupta won with on 8.5/10 half a point clear of Mihail Nikitenko and Ghosh Aronyak.

2. Alice Lee leads the Cairns Cup after three rounds - 1-3

   The 5th Cairns Cup takes place in Saint Louis Tue 10th Jun to Fri 20th Jun 2025. The early pace has been set by Alice Lee who started with wins against Nino Batsiashvili and Mariya Muzychuk before drawing against Nana Dzagnidze. Top seed is Tan Zhongyi and she started with a loss against Alina Kashlinskaya before drawing against second seed Humpy Koneru and then in form Bibisara Assaubayeva. Koneru, Alina Kashlinskaya and Harika Dronavalli share second place on 2/3.

3. Titled Tuesday Blitz 10th June 2025 - Games and Results

   The Titled Tuesday Blitz 10th June events were won by Hans Moke Niemann and Magnus Carlsen. In the Early Niemann beat Carlsen and Nakamura in successive rounds (although neither game is a classic) to set up his win. Niemann finished on 10.5/11 with a final round draw against Klementy Sychev, Magnus Carlsen was clear second on 10 points. In the Late event Carlsen won with 10/11, his only loss coming to Hikaru Nakamura, however his win against Niemann in round 10 came from a game where he was completely busted for much of the time.

   Both game files are available for download but there seems little point to displaying the games from files of this size and this may create significant problems for my server.

4. FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships 2025 - Games and Results

   The FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships take place in London Tue 10th to Mon 16th Jun 2025. Players include Firouzja, Aronian, MVL, Nakamura, Abdusattorov, Anand, 420 players of varying strengths playing for teams. Each team of 6 in each match requires one recreational player and one woman player.

5. Niemann-Sarin Blitz Match 2025 - Games and Results

   Hans Niemann played a match against Nihal Sarin over two days 8th to 9th June 2025. Day 1 was an 18 game match of straight blitz which Niemann won 10.5-7.5. Day two was Chess960 blitz and Niemann won 10-8. The match was on Endgame.AI a new site with some technical problems, they just about made it possible to extract the games, in Chess960 you can't get the starting position, only the position after one move, and queenside castling is given as kingside castling but I wasn't going to be beaten. I can't display Chess960 games but there is a download (now working properly).

6. 5th Cairns Cup 2025 - Games and Results

   The 5th Cairns Cup takes place in St Louis 10th to 20th June 2025. This women's event has the following players: Tan Zhongyi, Humpy Koneru, Nana Dzagnidze, Alina Kashlinskaya, Bibisara Assaubayeva, Mariya Muzychuk, Harika Dronavalli, Nino Batsiashvili, Carissa Yip and Alice Lee. The event is named in honor of co-founder Dr. Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield’s maiden name. Play starts at 12:00 local time, 18:00 GMT but a 30 minute delay will be applied to the moves.

7. Carlsen wins Norway Chess for the seventh time - 10

   Magnus Carlsen won the Norway Chess tournament for the seventh time in thirteen outings. Carlsen set up the result with a round 9 grind against Fabiano Caruana. Carlsen was a pawn up but whilst the engine said that initially Caruana should hold, in practice it was beyond him. In the final round Carlsen was put under pressure by Arjun Erigaisi, bailed out with a Queen sacrifice, looked in trouble, turned it around to be winning before finally settling for a draw in time trouble. That result guaranteed Carlsen at least a tie-break for first place and after Gukesh lost it won him the tournament. When all the other games had finished Erigaisi beat him in their Armageddon tie-break.

   Going into the final round Gukesh was just behind Carlsen and had black against Fabiano Caruana. Gukesh was gradually outplayed and dead lost for a long time, then towards the end he pulled back to equality, only to blunder for a final time,...