The Week in Chess

1. 15th XTX Markets London Chess Classic 2025 - Games and Results

   The 15th XTX Markets London Chess Classic takes place Wed 26th Nov to Sun 7th Dec 2025. Players: Alireza Firouzja, Luke Mcshane, Michael Adams, Nikolas Theodorou, Sam Shankland, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Pavel Eljanov, Nikita Vitiugov, Abhimanyu Mishra and Gawain Maroroa Jones. There's an open alongside with Praggnanandhaa as top seed. Strong Rapid and Blitz rounds out the event.

2. Wei Yi and Javokhir Sindarov reach the FIDE World Cup final and qualify for the Candidates tournament - 7

   The FIDE World Cup final will be between Wei Yi of China and Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan, this result mean both have qualified for the FIDE Candidates tournament in Pegeia, Cyprus, 28th March to 16th April 2026. These players join Fabiano Caruana, Anish Giri, Matthias Bluebaum who have already qualified for the Candidates, Hikaru Nakamura is almost certain to qualify on rating, in addition, the winner of the 3rd-4th playoff in this World Cup will also earn a place.

3. Tata Steel Chess tournament all set for its 2026 edition after announcing the players -

   The Tata Steel Chess tournament takes place in Wijk aan Zee 16th Jan - 1st Feb 2026. The fields for both the Masters and Challengers have been set and they reflect the state of professional chess today.

   The Masters group has an average age of just 23. Exciting players like Vincent Keymer, Arjun Erigaisi, Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Hans Niemann should light up the competition. World Champion Gukesh might be struggling at the moment but you'd want him in your tournament, especially as he only just missed out last year following a tie-break match with the eventual winner Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa. Dutch number one Anish Giri is the oldest player in the field at 32, he has enjoyed one of his best years, the highlight of which was his qualification for the Candidates by taking clear first place in the Grand Swiss Tournament in Samarkand.

4. Major surprises in the second round of the FIDE World Cup - 2

   The FIDE World Cup takes place in Goa, India, Sat 1st to Wed 26th Nov 2025. The second round concluded today, this round was where the event started in earnest, when the top seeds entered the fray. There has never been a shock winner of this event, but there are always surprise eliminations. Ian Nepomniachtchi, Wesley So and Hans Moke Niemann all would have fancied their chances against anyone, but Diptayan Ghosh, Titas Stremavicius and Lorenzo Lodici all had different ideas. Santosh Gujrathi Vidit had a bit too much for wunderkind Faustino Oro, well known players Vasyl Ivanchuk, David Navara, Ray Robson and Johan-Sebastian Christiansen didn't survive the round either. 128 players started the round, 64 are left.

5. FIDE World Cup 2025 - Games and Results

   The FIDE World Cup takes place in Goa, India, Sat 1st to Wed 26th Nov 2025. Players include: World Champion Gukesh, Erigaisi, Praggnanandhaa, Giri, So, Keymer, Wei Yi, Abdusattorov, Mamedyarov, Niemann, MVL, Nepomniachtchi, Le, Rapport, Aronian etc. It is a seven round knockout but the top 50 players only enter the competition in round 2 alongside the 78 winners of Round 1. The top three finishers will qualify for the Candidates tournament although players such as Gukesh and Giri and Caruana don't require this and the extra place will be awarded to "another path" in the qualification system. The Women's World Cup event that regularly takes place alongside was instead held in July as a separate tournament which I think was better for both.

6. Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown 2025 - Games and Results

   The Clutch Chess: Champions Showdown took place in Saint Louis Mon 27th Oct to Wed 29th Oct 2025. Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and World Champion Gukesh played three days of fast rapid chess (10m+5spm), a double round robin each day, eventually adding up to 18 rounds, Clutch chess is a special scoring system where the points available from each game increased each day from 1 to 2 to 3 with similar increases for draws from 0.5 to 1 to 1.5.

   Magnus Carlsen was the runaway winner, the large margin was due to his domination of Gukesh who made huge errors in their games and only managed one draw, there has to be a psychological component to these mistakes as his score was perfectly decent against the other players. Carlsen won all the mini-matches and continues to be better than anyone else. Fabiano Caruana finished second, Nakamura third and Gukesh last. The scoring system didn't change the finishing order of the players in any way.

7. Mihai Suba 1947-2025 -

   RIP Mihai Suba (Bucharest 1 June 1947 - Spain 26 October 2025, aged 78) Suba was a Romanian-born chess player who became an International Master in 1975 and a Grandmaster in 1978.

   Suba didn’t begin playing chess until the unusually late age of 19, yet within just a few years he had risen to become a formidable competitor. He was crowned Romanian Champion three times - in 1980, 1981, and 1985 - and narrowly missed qualifying for the Candidates Tournament after finishing third at the 1982 Las Palmas Interzonal.

   Among his tournament triumphs were first place at Dortmund 1983, and shared first at Prague 1985 and Timisoara 1987. In 1988, during the Lloyds Bank Masters in London, Suba defected from Romania to England, though he would soon represent his home country again after the fall of the communist regime. In 2017, he transferred his federation to Spain, having spent much of his life there.

   His book Dynamic Chess Strategy, first

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