Firouzja Cracks MVL's French Defense, Leads With Wesley So

GMs Alireza Firouzja and Wesley So started off with wins in round one of the Superbet Chess Classic Romania 2025. Firouzja won our Game of the Day against GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, where the French numbers one and two battled in the French Defense, while So received a gift blunder from GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac on move 40 in an equal endgame.

The all-Indian encounter between World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju and GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu was the craziest of three draws, and indeed, Gukesh was winning at one point. GM Levon Aronian vs. GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov was the quickest draw, while GM Fabiano Caruana attempted to exploit an extra pawn in a rook endgame against GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda, but to no avail.

Round two is on Thursday, May 8, starting at 8:30 a.m. ET / 14:30 CET / 6:00 p.m. IST.

For the first round of a tournament, two—and nearly three—decisive results is a promising start in terms of intrigue.

Round 1 Results

At the top of the standings, we see So and Firouzja.

Standings After Round 1

A week after the Superbet Poland Rapid & Blitz 2025, we are onto the second event of the 2025 Grand Chess Tour. Three of the tour's five legs, ahead of the GCT Finals in Sao Paulo, are rapid and blitz events; this one is classical. The only other classical event, not including the Finals, will be the Sinquefield Cup in August.

There are nine full tour participants. Five of them played in Warsaw last week, and Vachier-Lagrave leads in the GCT points standings after finishing second. He's followed, in order of standings, by Praggnanandhaa, Aronian, Firouzja, and Duda.

Four players begin their tour with this event. Caruana has won in Romania the last two years and will be looking to score the hat-trick. This is Gukesh's first classical event since finishing as runner-up at Tata Steel Chess 2025 (not counting Freestyle Chess). World number-six Abdusattorov, 2021 GCT champion and world number-11 So, and Romanian number-one Deac (the wildcard) round out the field.

The time control is 90 minutes for 40 moves plus another 30 minutes added after that, with a 30-second increment starting on move one. The tournament is a 10-player single round-robin held in the Grand Hotel Bucharest.

The prize fund is $350,000, with a generous $100,000 going to first place. On top of the immediate cash, however, players fight for GCT points. The top four on the standings will participate in the Finals in Sao Paulo, the first GCT event held in South America in its 10 years.

There were two decisive results, with the French duel taking the cake for quality and action.

Firouzja 1-0 Vachier-Lagrave

Firouzja's won two of the last three Grand Chess Tours and, since that's the bar he's set, his fifth-place finish in Warsaw was underwhelming. He told GM Cristian Chirila, "I prepared a lot for this tournament and I'm very motivated to win this tournament." In 2025, his only classical appearances have been a handful of games in the German Bundesliga—four draws. 

Vachier-Lagrave came with the first surprise, 2...e6, which turned into a French Defense after 3.d3. Firouzja explained the opening choice: "I was expecting some surprise because I have a good result against him in the Najdorf, but okay, I don't know what he would play... I was very happy with what I got."

Firouzja responded with the King's Indian Attack, a weapon of GM Bobby Fischer back in the day, but the amorphous 7.a4 was designed to steer clear of defined theory, just to get a game. Firouzja's positional bind turned into an attack, and he was proud of the dual-purpose rook lift: "I really liked my maneuver of rook to h4 because it makes my king safe and attacks also. It's very nice."

From there, the positional squeeze culminated with a winning tactic, and GM Rafael Leitao dives into the details in his analysis below.

So 1-0 Deac

Moving onto our second decisive game, So wasn't quite as pleased with it as one might expect. "I didn't play well today," he said, "but he started using loads of time." So went on: "He's always in time trouble every single year and actually I totally forgot about it, but when he started using loads of time in our game I remembered!"

Only time trouble could explain why this game ended the way it did. 38.g5!? was So's attempt to confuse the position just before the time control, and it worked. He actually coined a new chess term with this, calling playing against his opponent's clock the "time attack." Two moves later, his opponent collapsed, just one move away from receiving an extra 30 minutes.

So explained the psychological pressure at work here: "He's had one minute for the last 15 minutes, so surprisingly it worked."

Gukesh ½-½ Praggnanandhaa 

The Indian encounter was also a major contender for our Game of the Day, except that it petered out not too long after it had heated up. 

The most critical moment in the middlegame was when Praggnanandhaa grabbed a pawn with 16...Nxd5?, a move the computer labels as a losing mistake but one that's not so easy to punish in a game. As GM Peter Svidler said in the commentary, "I can believe the engine when it says it's good for White, but nobody knows it's good for White when you get it."

Though Gukesh trapped and won the queen, the position spun out of control. By the time White played 26.g5?, Black was fully equal, and all three results were possible.

But it didn't last long. White could have had a very murky "slight advantage" with 27.gxh6, but Gukesh said, "I thought I already spoiled it." Quickly from there, White forced a perpetual check.

Despite technically missing a win, the world champion didn't seem flustered at all. He said optimistically, "I think I was calculating well in general. Obviously there were a couple of chances, but okay, it's not that easy." 

Obviously there were a couple of chances, but okay, it's not that easy.

—Gukesh Dommaraju

Aronian ½-½ Abdusattorov

Aronian vs. Abdusattorov was the first game to end, with a draw. Aronian explained his risk-averse strategy with the white pieces for the first round: "Most of chess are familiar with me playing badly in the first round and blundering things, so I used to be in denial at first... now I am on the stage of acceptance." So he played for two results, a win or a draw.

The engine claims it was just about equal the whole way through, but Aronian said he could have at least pretended to have an advantage with 24.Ke2. Instead, his 24.Nc6 was based on a miscalculation; he missed Abdusattorov's precise 26...Rb1! that killed the game and led to a quick draw.

Duda ½-½ Caruana

Meanwhile, Duda vs. Caruana was the last game to end. The American GM equalized comfortably out of the Sicilian Four Knights and then pressed for more. He achieved the maximum, a pawn-up rook endgame, but even that was drawn, and the Polish number-one held it with no cause for alarm whatsoever.

Vachier-Lagrave will have his chance to bounce back from his loss against one of the tournament leaders, So, while Firouzja has the black pieces against Duda.

The 2025 Superbet Romania Chess Classic is the second event on the 2025 Grand Chess Tour and runs from May 7 to 16 at the Grand Hotel Bucharest in Romania. It's a 10-player round-robin with a time control of 90 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 30 more minutes for the rest of the game, plus a 30-second increment starting on move one. The prize fund is $350,000.