Carlsen Wins Grand Final With Game To Spare
GM Magnus Carlsen has won the 2025 Chess.com Classic with a game to spare. In the Grand Final against GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, he won a 24-move miniature in game one, drew game two, and then won a rook endgame in game three to finish the match early.
If including his wins in all five tour finals, Carlsen has now won 22 Grand Finals in the CCT. Across 18 games in this event, he didn't lose a single one. He takes the $25,000 top prize.
Playoffs Bracket
Grand Final: Carlsen 2.5-0.5 Vachier-Lagrave
Game one was absolutely crushing. 19.g4! was the star move, one that slightly opened up Carlsen's king but in fact created an avenue toward his opponent's. Vachier-Lagrave responded naturally, increasing the pressure on the knight. When Carlsen left it hanging, MVL took the bait and resigned three moves later.
GM Rafael Leitao goes over our Game of the Day below.
You can re-watch the moment Carlsen sacrificed his knight here:
Carlsen later said of his early lead: "I think in these matches the first game always makes a big difference. Honestly, it felt to me in the second game that... he was a bit rattled and he made like four or five moves in a row which positionally I thought weren't very good... after that, it was kind of a lot easier than I expected."
I think in these matches the first game always makes a big difference.
—Magnus Carlsen
Game two was a draw with a 97 accuracy score by both sides, though Carlsen still felt the momentum on his side. The match came to a surprisingly quick end when he won again with the white pieces in game three. 24. ...Re8?? was the decisive mistake, missing a tactic that allowed Carlsen to trade into a pawn-up rook endgame, one that he converted perfectly.
You can check out GM Hikaru Nakamura's video recap of the day below:
Carlsen suggested in the interview that he expected more of a challenge: "I was really hoping that this event would be very good practice for Norway Chess, but it probably wasn't—because I played the minimum amount of games, more or less, in order to win the event." Regarding the classical event that starts in Stavanger on Monday, he said he's done some prep, "but not a whole lot, so we'll see how I stack up against some of the more serious players."
Carlsen answered a question from the community about whether he sees himself playing chess into his 50s or whether he'd prefer to buy an island and retire at some point. The answer was quite fitting for the conclusion of an online tournament: "Can't I just buy an island and then get Wi-Fi and play chess from there?"
That concludes the 2025 Champions Chess Tour, and the following 12 players will play at the 2025 Esports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at the end of July.
The Chess.com Classic is the second of two legs in the 2025 Champions Chess Tour. On May 19, the world's best players competed in the Play-in, a nine-round Swiss with a 10-minute time control (no increment). The top eight qualify, with eight invited players, for the Playoffs, a four-day event on May 20-23 with a prize fund of $150,000. The top-12 on the CCT leaderboard make it to the Esports World Cup in the summer of 2025.
Previous coverage:
- Vachier-Lagrave Advances To Grand Final Vs. Carlsen
- Carlsen Advances After Nakamura Resigns In Winning Position
- Carlsen, Nakamura, Abdusattorov, Nepomniachtchi Advance To Winners Semifinals
- Duda, Arjun Qualify For Esports World Cup, Fedoseev Wins Swiss
- Chess.com Classic Starts May 18 With 9 Esports World Cup Spots On The Line
