FIDE Grand Swiss Chess 2025 Round 1: World champion Gukesh Dommaraju started his FIDE Grand Swiss 2025campaign with a victory over Etienne Bacrot on Thursday. Also starting off with victories were the two defending champions from India, Vidit Santosh Gujrathi and Vaishali Rameshbabu, who had won the 2023 Grand Swiss tournaments. While Vidit took down German grandmaster Alexander Donchenko in 37 moves, Vaishali defeated Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova. Meanwhile, Divya Deshmukh was handed a heartbreaking defeat in the first round by Abhimanyu Puranik, who was her second when she won the FIDE Women’s World Cup two months ago.
You can scroll down for interactives of how some of the most notable games from the Grand Swiss involving Indian players played out and a GIF of the games
Meanwhile, Praggnanandhaa R, the top seed at FIDE Grand Swiss tournament, was held to a draw by Jeffery Xiong in the first round of the 11-round Swiss tournament in Uzbekistan’s Samarkand. Also drawing their opening games were Nihal Sarin (vs Rasmus Svane), Leon Luke Mendonca (vs Andrey Esipenko), Pranav V (vs Radoslaw Wojtaszek), Raunak Sadhwani (vs Jules Moussard) and Narayanan SL (vs Alexander Grischuk).
Harikrishna Pentala lost to Anton Demchenko while Murali Karthikeyan was handed a defeat by Aydin Suleymanli in a game that saw a beautiful queen sacrifice.
The tournament holds significant stakes, as the top two finishers in both the Open and Women’s sections will earn a place in the 2026 Candidates Tournament, which decides the challenger for the World Champion title.
INTERACTIVE: How Gukesh beat Etienne Bacrot
INTERACTIVE: How Praggnanandhaa drew with Jeffery Xiong
INTERACTIVE: How Arjun Erigaisi drew with Maksim Chigaev
INTERACTIVE: How Divya Deshmukh lost to Abhimanyu Puranik
SCROLL DOWN TO FOLLOW TOP INDIANS IN ACTION AT FIDE GRAND SWISS 2025 1ST ROUND:
FIDE Grand Swiss Chess: After Women’s World Cup triumph, Divya Deshmukh to test herself in the open section
Divya Deshmukh in action against Tan Zhongyi during FIDE World Cup semifinal. (FIDE/Anna Shtourman)
Of the 115 players fate could have handpicked to play Divya Deshmukh in the first round of the FIDE Grand Swiss tournament, she drew arguably the one she would have least like to face in Samarkand – Abhimanyu Puranik, a man who helped her become the FIDE Women’s World Cup champion two months ago.
The field in Uzbekistan includes Indian chess’ golden generation of world champion D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi and Vidit Gujrathi, who won the last edition of the tournament in 2023. There is also a strong veteran contingent featuring Ian Nepomniachtchi, Levon Aronian, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Hans Moke Niemann and Anish Giri.
