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Arjun Beats Aronian To Reach World Cup Quarterfinals
Arjun pounced on a blunder to knock Aronian out of the 2025 FIDE World Cup. Photo: Michal Walusza/FIDE.

Arjun Beats Aronian To Reach World Cup Quarterfinals

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Colin_McGourty
| 45 | Chess Event Coverage

Second-seed GM Arjun Erigaisi is through to the Quarterfinals of the 2025 FIDE World Cup after finding a beautiful finish to eliminate GM Levon Aronian. He'll play seventh-seed GM Wei Yi, who eventually punished an early mistake by GM Sam Sevian. They're joined by Uzbek GMs Nodirbek Yakubboev and Javokhir Sindarov, who overcame GMs Gabriel Sargissian and Frederik Svane, respectively. Four spots will be decided in tiebreaks, after three quiet draws and a heartbreaking rook-endgame miss by GM Alexander Donchenko against GM Liem Le.  

The round-five tiebreaks are on Sunday, November 16, starting at 4:30 a.m. ET / 10:30 CET / 3 p.m. IST.

Round 5 Results

Three games were decisive on Saturday, and it could easily have been four, while the draw in Svane-Sindarov was also all Sindarov required to advance after winning game one.

Fed Player 1 Rating - Fed Player 2 Rating G1 G2 TB
Javokhir SINDAROV (16) 2721 - Frederik Svane (64) 2640 1-0 ½-½
Jose Martinez (57) 2644 - Pentala Harikrishna (24) 2690 ½-½ ½-½ .
Gabriel Sargissian (76) 2616 - Nodirbek YAKUBBOEV (28) 2689 ½-½ 0-1
Alexander Donchenko (61) 2641 - Liem Le (13) 2729 ½-½ ½-½ .
Sam Shankland (46) 2649 - Daniil Dubov (30) 2674 ½-½ ½-½ .
Andrey Esipenko (27) 2681 - Aleksey Grebnev (86) 2617 ½-½ ½-½ .
Samuel Sevian (23) 2701 - WEI Yi (7) 2753 ½-½ 0-1
ARJUN Erigaisi (2) 2769 - Levon Aronian (15) 2728 ½-½ 1-0

Games, Results, and Bracket.

After seven draws in the first games of round five, a repeat and mass tiebreaks seemed a real possibility, but in fact just three of the games passed without incident. GMs Sam Shankland and Daniil Dubov made the draw we've come to expect when Dubov has the white pieces—his 76th classical game in a row without defeat—though the Grunfeld Defense that ended in an opposite-colored bishop endgame perhaps took longer than expected.

Shankland won a pawn vs. Dubov, but it was never more than a nominal advantage. Photo: Michal Walusza/FIDE.

GM Aleksey Grebnev finished half an hour up on the clock as he made a 30-move draw by repetition against GM Andrey Esipenko, while GM Pentala Harikrishna probed but was unable to make inroads into GM Jose Martinez's position. All those matchups will be decided in tiebreaks on Sunday.

There were early signs of decisive action elsewhere, however, and not least in Wei-Sevian. The Chinese star cheerfully confessed after the game: "I feel so excited but I was lucky today because I just wanted to go for a boring game, but then my opponent made a careless move and I gained a pawn."

I just wanted to go for a boring game, but then my opponent made a careless move and I gained a pawn.

—Wei Yi

Sevian spent just two minutes on 10...Bf5? and then had 63 moves to regret it after 11.Nxc6! was played. Wei felt the position should still be defendable for Black. At times the evaluation did reach 0.00, but a few mistakes condemned the 24-year-old U.S. grandmaster to a World Cup exit.

Wei Yi with a young fan. Photo: Michal Walusza/FIDE.

Long before that game was over, however, we had two more decisive results, including one in the match of the round, Aronian vs. Arjun. 

"The preparation I did is speaking for itself!" said Arjun after he made his first 17 moves without using any time, building up a 30-minute lead on the clock. The Indian star wasn't sure about his position, however, and had clearly missed that he had a close-to-winning knight sac on move 26. Five moves after that, Aronian offered a draw, which emboldened Arjun: "When he played 31.Ne3 and offered a draw, that gave me some confidence that he’s happy with a draw, so it gave me some leverage."

Two moves later, Aronian was lost, but both players missed the sacrifice on h2 with ...Rxe3 and ...Qf4+ to follow.

That wouldn't come back to haunt Arjun, however, since five moves later he did find an arguably even more beautiful knockout blow, 38...Nh3!!, a move he'd seen in advance so that he was hoping for Aronian's mistake. 

With Aronian's hopes of winning a third World Cup over, he waited for Arjun to return to the board and then resigned with a smile. Aronian was the last player remaining to have played in the Candidates before, so the World Cup is astonishingly going to provide us with three first-time Candidates. Arjun's toughest match, on paper, is his next, when he takes on Wei.

Aronian with chess fans after he was knocked out. Photo: Michal Walusza/FIDE.

Arjun's win over Aronian is our Game of the Day, which GM Rafael Leitao has analyzed below.

Arjun was greeted by a cheering crowd as he left the playing hall.

Almost at the same moment that game was being decided, Yakubboev clinched a win over Sargissian.

Yakubboev suddenly broke clear against Sargissian. Photo: Michal Walusza/FIDE.

The Uzbek player, wielding the white pieces, had shown fine preparation, but Sargissian found all the right moves until he spent seven of his remaining 11 minutes to play the losing 29...Nc6?. Yakubboev pounced on the opportunity.

Yakubboev is joined in the Quarterfinals by his compatriot Sindarov, who could in fact have taken over from GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov as the Uzbek number-one with a win. "I don't care about this. I just want to qualify for the Candidates!" was his response when that was mentioned.

Sindarov had beaten Svane in the first game, so he needed only a draw, and he was very happy to see some topical opening preparation on the board.

"I know after the 19...Nd5 move, 20.Qc1, 20.Qc2, 20.Qc5, I checked today, and I was ready for all of his moves, and I was feeling very good in the game," said Sindarov, and in fact he followed his own 45-minute game against then-GM Kirill Shevchenko from the 2022 World Team Championship until 23.Qxa7 (Shevchenko played 23.Rc1 and won).

Despite the opening success, Svane kept some chances, especially when he won a pawn near the time control, and Sindarov admitted he was surprised on the 40th move and got down to his last eight seconds.

Svane leaves the World Cup after a fantastic run that included knocking out World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, while Sindarov gets a rest day as he awaits the winner of Harikrishna-Martinez.

Svane met his match in Sindarov. Photo: Michal Walusza/FIDE.

There was one more draw on Saturday, and it was absolutely extraordinary. Beating Le with the black pieces is a herculean task, but Donchenko came as close as possible without quite finishing the job. The German number-two got down to 22 seconds on move 36 when he played what engines gave as a winning move for the first time in the game, but there would be many more twists ahead, including move 50, when Le missed the beautiful saving resource 50.b5!, sacrificing a rook to queen the pawn.

Le's speed eventually paid off, since Donchenko couldn't navigate all the complications despite reaching a rook endgame with three pawns to zero. When you need to defend the suspicion that "all rook endgames are drawn," this game is excellent evidence! 

Both players will now experience tiebreaks for the first time in this World Cup, with 2013 World Blitz Champion Le perhaps a bigger favorite, the faster the time controls become.    

Donchenko needs to come back from a near-miss to play tiebreaks. Photo: Michal Walusza/FIDE.

The winner of that match will play Yakubboev, while just one quarterfinal match will be the one predicted by pre-tournament seedings: seventh-seed Wei vs. second-seed Arjun. The Quarterfinals start Monday, but first we have four tiebreaks to enjoy!  

2025 FIDE World Cup Bracket: Round 5 Onward

How to watch?

You can watch the event on Chess.com/TV. You can also enjoy the show on Chess24 Twitch or YouTube. Games from the event can be viewed on our events page.

The live broadcast was hosted by IM Jovanka Houska and GM Arturs Neiksans.

The 2025 FIDE World Cup, which takes place from November 1 to 26 in Goa, India, determines three spots in the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament. It is a 206-player single-elimination knockout tournament with eight rounds. Each match consists of two classical games followed by rapid and blitz tiebreaks if needed. The prize fund is $2 million.

Previous reports:

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Colin McGourty

Colin McGourty led news at Chess24 from its launch until it merged with Chess.com a decade later. An amateur player, he got into chess writing when he set up the website Chess in Translation after previously studying Slavic languages and literature in St. Andrews, Odesa, Oxford, and Krakow.

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