TWIC is 30. First issue 17th September 1994.
General Chess Stories 2025 (10)
Chess this Weekend 9th to 11th May 2025
Mark Crowther - Friday 9th May 2025
Alireza Firouzja lost to Fabiano Caruana in Round 3. | https://grandchesstour.org/
The GCT Superbet Chess Classic Romania is the main event, already this is shaping up nicely with Fabiano Caruana and Praggnanandhaa starting with two draws and a win each. Three players, Firouzja, So and MVL have started with a win, a loss and a draw. The rest day is on Monday. The event starts at 1pm UK time but there's a half hour delay in all the broadcasts.
The final FIDE Women's Grand Prix in Grosslobming, Austria Tue 6th May to Fri 16th May 2025. This is the final event in the Grand Prix with two Candidates places at stake and there are some complicated scenarios. It still looks likely that Goryachkina has enough to qualify (her GP is over), Anna Muzychuk and Tan Zhongyi probably need to win the event and Jiner Zhu needs a high placing, not necessarily first. Muzychuk has started with 3.5/4 including a beating one of her main rivals Jiner Zhu. Zhu started with 0/2 but got back to 2/4 today. Tan Zhongyi started with 2/2, but then lost two and is now on 2/4.
The Asian Individual Championships take place Wed 7th to Thu 15th May 2025. Leading players: Nihal Sarin, Tabatabaei, Yakubboev, Karthikeyan and Vokhidov. Bardiya Daneshvar started with 3/3 with a huge number of players on 2.5.
The Polish Championships continue this weekend and take place 5th to 15th May. Pawel Teclaf leads early on with 3/4.
58th Capablanca Memorial has its opening ceremony on Friday night before starting on Saturday. The elite section: Volodar Murzin, Jonas Buhl, Bjerre, Evgeny Romanov, Arseniy Nesterov and Carlos Daniel Albornoz Cabrera.
The Hungarian Team Championships have their final three rounds Friday to Sunday. Pentala Harikrishna, Benjamin Gledura, Pavel Eljanov, Sanan Sjugirov and Baadur Jobava play. The league seems to have been decided with Friday's Round 7 when Tuxera ANSK beat closest rivals ASE Paks 6-4 in a close match decided when Tuxera won on boards 3 and 4, the remaining games were drawn. This put Tuxera three points clear with only two rounds to go.
The Dutch League finishes on Saturday, there may be some big names.
The French Top 12 for Women has five rounds this weekend, The top four will play off later for the titles.
The Sunway Formentera Open finished on Friday 9th. Valentin Dragnev won the event with 8.5/10 a point clear of Artem Omelja and Sergey A. Fedorchuk.
