The Week in Chess

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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 published by Pergamon Chess in 1991, offered a distinctive and personal perspective on chess through his own games. It has since become a classic, with a new edition released by New In Chess in 2016.

   Mihai Suba Wikipedia entry

5. 40th European Club Cup 2025 - Games and Results

   The 40th European Club Cup and 29th Club Cup for Women took place in Rhodes, Greece, 19th to 25th October 2025.

   The top teams were:

   • BayeganPendik chess sports (TUR with Giri, Mamedyarov, Rapport, Sarin, etc.)
   • Alkaloid (MKD with Erigaisi, Wei Yi, Yu Yangyi, etc.)
   • Novi Bor (CZE with Keymer, Vidit, Harikrishna, Navara, etc.)
   • SuperChess (ROU with Gukesh, Van Foreest, Maghsoodloo, Sarana)

   Cercle d'échecs de Monte-Carlo, Turkish Airlines sports club, Tajfun SK Ljubljana, and SuperChess were the top seeds in the women's event.

   There was a wide variety of player strengths competing.

   4th seeds SuperChess claimed the title ahead of Alkaloid and Novy Bor.

   Cercle d'échecs de Monte-Carlo won the women's title ahead of Sirmium Sremska Mitrovica and Tajfun SK Ljubljana.

6. US Chess Championships 2025 - Games and Results

   The US Chess Championships took place in Saint Louis Sun 12th Oct to Sat 25th Oct 2025.

   Players: Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, Hans Moke Niemann, Levon Aronian, Awonder Liang, Samuel Sevian, Ray Robson, Grigoriy Oparin, Sam Shankland, Abhimanyu Mishra, Andy Woodward and Dariusz Swiercz.

   Women: Carissa Yip, Alice Lee, Tatev Abrahamyan, Irina Krush, Anna Sargsyan, Rose Atwell, Thalia Cervantes Landeiro, Anna Zatonskih, Nazi Paikidze, Atousa Pourkashiyan, Megan Althea Paragua and Jennifer Yu.

   Fabiano Caruana won his fourth title in a row, his fifth in total. Carissa Yip won the women's title finishing with 6.5/7 after a slow start.

7. Carissa Yip wins her fourth women's title in five years -

   Carissa Yip has claimed her fourth U.S. Women’s Chess Championship title in five years, securing victory in the final round with a win against Thalia Cervantes Landeiro with the black pieces. The turning point came after Cervantes’ mistake with 19.Bd4?, compounded by 21.Rad1?, leaving Yip clearly winning.

   Meanwhile her closest rival Anna Sargsyan was the beneficiary of a very serious blunder 34.Re1? (34.Rd3!=) by Alice Lee which was almost immediately decisive, she took second place alone after Irina Krush could only draw against her long term rival Anna Zatonskih.

8. Fabiano Caruana wins his fifth US title -

   Fabiano Caruana secured his fifth U.S. Championship, and fourth consecutive title, after a fairly quick final-round draw against Levon Aronian in Saint Louis. The result proved sufficient, but Caruana had to wait for Wesley So’s game to finish to confirm his victory. A win by So over Grigoriy Oparin would have forced a playoff, but So had to settle for a draw, finishing in clear second place. Caruana had missed a golden opportunity to defeat So in Round 6, failing to convert a completely winning position.