Team MGD1 defeated Malcolm's Mates 3.5-2.5 to win FIDE World Rapid Team Championship 2025. They scored 21/24 and finished a full point ahead of the rest. Hexamind Chess Team scored 20/24 to secure second place. Freedom, Uzbekistan and WR Chess scored 17/24 each. Out of them, Freedom was placed third due to better tie-break scores. Hexamind is the only team who managed to beat the eventual champion, MGD1 in Round 8. Freedom drew with MGD1 in Round 5. It is not about remaining unbeaten, it is all about how you take losses and bounce back. MGD1 truly exemplified it. GM Arjun Erigaisi, GM Pentala Harikrishna, GM David Anton Guijarro, GM Leon Luke Mendonca, GM Pranav Venkatesh, IM Stavroula Tsolakidou and Atharvaa P Tayade won Team Gold. World Blitz Team Pool Stage starts today at 2 p.m. local time, 6:30 p.m. IST. Photo: Abhyudaya Ram
This week’s puzzle is a whodunnit on 64 squares, if you like! The diagram shows a position reached after both sides played exactly eight legal moves. Can you reconstruct the game?
Go to ChessRanga for the complete solution!
The ChessBase Mega Database 2025 is the premiere chess database with over 11 million games from 1475 to 2024 in high quality. Packing more than 120,000 annotated games, Mega 2024 contains the world‘s largest collection of high-class analysed games. Train like a pro! Prepare for your opponents with ChessBase and the Mega Database 2025. Let grandmasters explain how to best handle your favorite variations, improve your repertoire and much more.
Includes Mega Update Service 2025: update your Mega with your ChessBase 18 (or 17/16) program every week with over 5,000 new games.
• Comfortable design with even more top-level tournaments than ever before!
• Direct access to All World Championship matches, Candidates tournaments, famous historical tournaments and all Olympiads!
• Player lexicon for download with over 1.4 million player names and more than 44,000 player photos (only with ChessBase 18/17/16)
And there's a whole lot more where that came from! Today, we have a special offer on Mega Database 2025 - use the coupon code "10MEGADB25" to avail a 10% discount! This offer is valid until 29th June 2025 - hurry up and get it now!
WR Chess Team successfully defended their World Blitz Team title as they defeated KazChess 4-2 in both matches. Hexamind Chess Team won the third place against Uzbekistan by winning by both matches with the same score 2.5-3.5. Only two out of 27 board prizes were won by Indians. GM Arjun Erigaisi (MGD1) got Bronze on Board no.1 and Sarbartho Mani (Freedom) received on Board no.9. The total prize fund was €500000 combining Rapid and Blitz, €310000 in Rapid and €190000 in Blitz. The top three prizes were: €110000, 70000 and 50000 each respectively. For Blitz, the top three were - €75000, €50000 and €30000 each. Photo: FIDE/Rafal Oleksiewicz
Nodirbek Abdusattorov (UZB) defeated Richard Rapport (HUN) to emerge early sole leader at 2nd UzChess Cup Masters 2025. Abdusattorov was confident going into the relatively balanced bishop vs knight endgame. The Hungarian's blunder allowed the former World Rapid champion to walk away with victory. R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi and Aravindh Chithambaram drew their respective battles against Nodirbek Yakubboev (UZB), Ian Nepomniachtchi and Parham Maghsoodloo (IRI). Javokhir Sindarov (UZB) forced a draw via repetition as his opponent, Shamsiddin Vokhidov (UZB) left without a choice to keep his queen on the board. Round 4 starts tomorrow at 3 p.m. local time, 3:30 p.m. IST. Photos: Shahid Ahmed
Aravindh Chithambaram defeated Aram Hakobyan (ARM) to become the winner of 6th Stepan Avagyan Memorial 2025. Aravindh made a nice calculation in the queen and double knight endgame, resulting in a crucial pawn gain after his opponent erred. R Praggnanandhaa also ended up scoring the same as Aravindh 6.5/9. However, Aravindh became the champion due to better tie-break scores, Praggnanandhaa had to settle for second place. They finished 1.5 points ahead of the rest. Dmitrij Kollars (GER) scored 5/9 to finish third. Aravindh is now World no.9 with a live rating 2757.8, Praggnanandhaa is World no.6 with a live rating 2774.2. Photo: Chess Academy of Armenia
GM Abhijeet Gupta made a quick draw against IM Aronyak Ghosh to win 21st Delhi GM Open 2025. Abhijeet became a clear champion with 8.5/10. He won this event for the fourth time since 2008. Five players - GM Mihail Nikitenko, GM Diptayan Ghosh, IM Aronyak Ghosh, GM Aditya S Samant and GM Duc Hoa Nguyen (VIE) scored 8/10 each. They were placed second to sixth according to tie-breaks. As many as 16 players scored 7.5/10 each. Out of them, top seed of the tournament, GM S L Narayanan was placed seventh according to tie-breaks. The total prize fund was ₹12100000, ₹5100000 in Category A. The top three prizes are ₹700000, ₹600000 and ₹500000 along with a trophy each. This is Abhijeet's first triumph of the year. Photos: Anmol Bhargav