Wei Yi Wins Swiss, Qualifies With 7 Others For Playoffs

GMs Andrey Esipenko, Yu Yangyi, Vladislav Artemiev, Wei Yi, Alexander Grischuk, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Sam Sevian, and Anish Giri qualified, through the Play-in, for the 2025 Chessable Masters Playoffs. Wei qualified directly by winning the Swiss tournament, while the other seven joined by winning two-game matches after the Swiss. 

The following players are already in the Playoffs by invitation: GMs Magnus Carlsen, Wesley So, Arjun Erigaisi, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, Hikaru Nakamura, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Fabiano Caruana, and Alireza Firouzja. You can see the matchups for Tuesday below.

Day one of the Playoffs is on Tuesday, February 18, starting at 11:00 a.m. ET / 17:00 CET / 9:30 p.m. IST.

Playoffs Bracket

• New Stakes: The Road To The Esports World Cup
• Swiss: Wei Advances To Playoffs, Chooses Praggnanandhaa As Opponent
• Match Play: Yu Yangyi Plays Near-Perfect Game, Grischuk Wins Drama Award

New Stakes: The Road To The Esports World Cup

The Champions Chess Tour returns this February with all-new stakes. On top of fighting for prize money, the top-12 on the CCT leaderboard will qualify for the Esports World Cup this summer. Several top players, like Carlsen and Caruana, have already signed on with teams—before they've even qualified for the championship. You can learn more about the qualification cycle in the video below.

The road to the 2025 Esports World Cup starts now! Check out our explainer video for the 2025 #ChessChamps! pic.twitter.com/JMZUSCwPzY

— chess24 (@chess24com) February 17, 2025

The timeline is faster this year, as there are two events available for the players. Each event has a $150,000 prize fund, with $25,000 going to the winner. The Chessable Masters comes first and the Play-in completed the field of 16 players for the Playoffs. Below, you can see the invited players as well as logos for those that signed with teams (note Nakamura has just announced his participation with Team Falcons). 

Swiss: Wei Advances To Playoffs, Chooses Praggnanandhaa As Opponent

We never got a sole leader in the Play-in, and the winner was ultimately decided by tiebreaks. Wei earned automatic entry to the Playoffs, without playing an extra match, and also got to choose his opponent: Praggnanandhaa!

Players who finished second-15th advanced to the Match Play portion. It's notable that three of the top-four are Chinese players.

The Play-in featured 172 grandmasters and three international masters who qualified the previous day. The time control was 10+0 and the Swiss was nine rounds. Essentially, all of the world's best players joined this tournament, with even former World Champion Ding Liren providing a cameo (he finished with 4.5/9).

MVL, Aronian, Lazavik top the field just minutes before the #ChessChamps #ChessableMasters begins!https://t.co/Vwjv65rWRg pic.twitter.com/xLzgUbQgJR

— chess24 (@chess24com) February 17, 2025

It was a professional and smooth performance by Wei, who went undefeated with five wins and four draws. Most of his wins came in the first half of the tournament as he played ambitiously, so that he could finish with two quicker draws at the end.

His craziest game was his last victory, against GM Sanan Sjugirov in round seven. Commentator IM David Pruess pointed out that we don't often see games where White plays both the moves c4 and f4 in regular chess, and that the position looked like it came out of a Chess960 game instead. There were mistakes by both sides, but Wei navigated the wilderness better than his opponent:

Duda had been leading virtually the entire tournament, sharing the lead with Wei for several rounds in the second half. A critical game for the Polish Fighter was in round two against GM Anton Demchenko, where he won from a lost position.

Duda entered the last round in the shared lead with Wei, after their quick draw in round eight. However, GM Dmitry Andreikin brought the Pole's fantastic run to a disappointing end after finding the critical resource of 23...Qc6! to win material. This move was key in several variations and was clearly a move Duda missed.

Most of the drama happened in the last round as a large group of players fought for the 15 spots available. The following players were in the top-15 after round eight but didn't make it in after their last game: GMs Rauf Mamedov, Shamsiddin Vokhidov, Nihal Sarin, Hans Niemann, and Sjugirov.

Grischuk squeezed into 14th place with, arguably, the most shocking tactical sequence of round nine, whether or not he foresaw all the moves ahead of time during the scramble. Sjugirov was unfortunately again the victim of this unfortunate turnaround:

Match Play: Yu Yangyi Plays Near-Perfect Game, Grischuk Wins Drama Award

Following the Swiss, we had seven matches between the players who finished in the top-15. They were two-game matches with 10 minutes for each side, and five of the matches went to armageddon tiebreaks.

Just two matches were decided in the initial two games. After stumbling in the final round of the Swiss, Duda returned full of strength to eliminate GM Aravindh Chithambaram with the only 2-0 sweep. It was a reassuring ending for the Polish number-one who had spoken recently about his "crisis of faith" and thoughts of potentially quitting chess.

Meanwhile, Yu won his first game against GM Nodirbek Yakubboev and drew the second, the smoothest match victory of the day. His win in game one, in a Caro-Kann Defense, was one of the best played games—at 97.9 percent accuracy, it's just about as close to perfection as anyone can hope for in a 10-minute game. We've selected that as our Game of the Day, and below GM Rafael Leitao lets us in on all of its secrets.

As for the players who won armageddons, the drama award once again went to Grischuk, who eliminated GM Raunak Sadhwani by winning the armageddon with Black in 33 moves.

But the wildest game was the second, which Grischuk won on demand after dropping a loss in game one. Just how wild, you ask? Check out the madness between moves 34 and 40, where Game Review marks red and orange moves as mistakes.

Grischuk's attack, which started with the move 35.Re4, ultimately panned out, but there were several opportunities for Black to defend, draw, and make it to the Playoffs!

Unfortunately for Andreikin, his showstopping ended in the Swiss; Esipenko, after losing the first game, won the next two to qualify.

It was also heartbreak for GM Lu Shanglei who, under pressure, blundered an immediate tactic in his armageddon game against Giri.

Whether or not you consider it to be an "upset," Sevian with Black in the armageddon defeated GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave after two draws in the regular games. Carlsen, who has lost matches against MVL in the Champions Chess Tour, may be breathing a sigh of relief.

In contrast, experience prevailed in the match of Artemiev vs. GM Denis Lazavik. The Belarusian teenager had made it to the last two CCT Finals and is always one of the top contenders, but Artemiev slow-cooked an 86-move armageddon game that culminated with an attack.

We're all set for the next four days, which will be a double-elimination bracket. Four players will already be eliminated on Tuesday.

Previous coverage:

• Chessable Masters Opens 2025 Champions Chess Tour Spearheaded By 5-Time Champion Carlsen
• Chess Makes Historic Debut At Esports World Cup 2025 With $1.5 Million Prize Pool