Fide Grand Swiss 2023

[Sin Hombre]

FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 just concluded.

The highlight was Vaishali winning it again and qualifying for the candidates (to join Divya and Humpy).

The lowlight was the open section where Pragg, Arjun, Gukesh were the top-3 seeds and none of them qualified. Arjun finished 6th and was in contention until the last day. Pragg started ok but slowly fell off and had a bad tournament. Gukesh started strongly, then had a meltdown and finished ok.

Nihal Sarin was the only other Indian who had chances and was leading after Round 8 but missed chances in rounds 9 and 10 doomed him. Divya who played the open section did well.

No candidates from this, now only Fide World Cup is left. Pragg should still qualify from the circuit, but last chance saloon at the home WC for Arjun, Vidit, Aravindh and Nihal.

[rajitghosh]

I followed this tournament very closely and watched many of the matches live. Gukesh is clearly not able to take the pressure of being world champion and is making silly blunders. Arjun and Nihal Sareen played pretty well. With a little bit of luck one of them could have qualified. Pragg probably took more risks than needed. He is already leading the Fide Circuit by a huge margin and is almost certain to qualify. So he could have played safe. Divya's performance was a revelation. There were a couple of more pleasing performances. V Pranav the junior world champion punched way above his weight. He gained 50 Elo points. The American of Indian origin Abhimanyu Misra who is a teenager was another standout performer and even beat Gukesh. Vidit didn't do too badly either. A big disappointment on the women's side was Harika.

[Sin Hombre]

MIshra's win against Gukesh was because of the latter overpressing, not some excellence from Abhimanyu outside of dogged defending. As a lower rated player, people took chances against him and he defended well and played solidly but this generally doesn't translate well to get to 2750+. Nihal is a great example of that.

But at least finally a good tournament for him after 18 months of struggles. He is still super young of course but even younger Erdogmus has become the next superstar.

Buddy Pranav hopefully will do a Vidit or Aravindh and be a late bloomer.