Erigaisi top seed for FIDE Grand Swiss 2025
Indian Grandmaster Erigaisi Arjun will be the top seed for the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 scheduled to be held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from September 3 to 15, 2025. Held in alternate years, this event lucratively offers two spots for the ensuing Candidates along with a handsome total prize fund of $ 855,000 for both FIDE Grand Swiss ($ 625,000) & Women’s Grand Swiss ($230,000) respectively.
GM Erigaisi is just ahead of world champion Gukesh Dommaraju (who chose to play) followed by big guns viz., Abdusattorov, Pragg, Firouzja, Nepo, Giri, Mamedyarov, Aronian etc. Erigaisi who narrowly missed the 2024 Candidates qualification to Fabiano Caruana (USA) would be looking to make amends here. Top three FIDE rated players in the world Magnus, Hikaru and Fabiano are not playing this time. Also not playing, surprisingly, will be former World Champion Ding Liren (China). Since losing the title to the Indian last December Ding hasn’t played a single!? classical game of chess.
The strongest-ever Swiss system tournament the 11 round FIDE Grand Swiss is back with the fourth edition, after previous ones in the Douglas, Isle of Man (2019 and 2023) and Riga, Latvia (2021). This key tournament of the year will see 172 players take part – 116 in the Open and 56 in the Women’s tournament. Among 116 players in the Open, 101 have qualified by rating, with the remaining spots allocated to Continental representatives, six FIDE wildcards (includes GMs Boris Gelfand & Aleksandra Goryachkina) and five are nominated by the local organiser.
Hungry young lions confirmed to play are GMs Hans Moke Niemann (22), Vincent Keymer (20), Javokhir Sindarov (19), Nihal Sarin (20), Awonder Liang (22) among others. The top two qualifiers in both the Open and the Women’s competition will qualify for the 2026 Candidates tournament, where the winner will go on to challenge the World Champion. The increased prize fund compared to earlier edition in the Open is $625,000 (from $460,000 in 2023) and in the Women’s competition raised to $230,000 (from $140,000 in 2023).
The first Grand Swiss held in Isle of Man 2019 was won by GM Wang Hao (China). The second edition in Riga saw GMs Alireza Firouzja (France) and Lei Tingjie (China) emerging on top. Riga also saw the initiation of inaugural Grand Swiss Women’s event. The 2023 Grand Swiss back in Isle of Man was won by Indian GMs Vidit Gujrathi and Vaishali Rameshbabu.
Super-strong Swiss tournaments (Aeroflot, Gibraltar, Pardubice, Philadelphia etc) have their own way of upsetting the best of the calculations. Hence, all top GMs are likely to keep their fingers crossed till the very end.
Photo Courtesy: TATA Steel Chess 2025
Official Site: https://grandswiss2025.fide.com/
