Fedoseev Wins With 3 Rounds To Spare

GM Vladimir Fedoseev has won the 2025 Superbet Rapid & Blitz Poland with three rounds to spare and ultimately finished with 26.5 points, one of the highest scores ever in Grand Chess Tour rapid and blitz events. He takes home $40,000.

The Superbet Chess Classic Romania 2025, the first classical event of this year's Grand Chess Tour, is only a week away. That begins on May 7 at 8:30 a.m. ET / 14:30 CET / 6:00 p.m. IST.

• Standings
• Fedoseev Doesn't Slow Down
• MVL Wins Race For 2nd

Fedoseev handily won the tournament with a five-point gap ahead of GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. In third, GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu leapfrogged GM Levon Aronian with a black win in the final round. 

Final Standings

(See all standings here.)

Besides prize money, players vie for GCT points and Vachier-Lagrave now leads with 10. As a wildcard, Fedoseev didn't earn any, but he did receive a nice monetary prize.

Prize Distribution

Players with zero points didn't participate in this first event. We will see the rest of the Grand Chess Tour participants, including World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, next week in Romania.

Grand Chess Tour Standings

Fedoseev Doesn't Slow Down

Fedoseev went far above expectations as the wildcard in this world-class event. He put up one of the best performances ever in 10 years at Grand Chess Tour rapid and blitz. Unsurprisingly, GMs Magnus Carlsen's name comes up a few times in the records from previous years.

Highest Ever Scores In Grand Chess Tour R&B

The Russian-born Slovenian GM gains 71 rating points in blitz and jumps to world number-13 on the live rating list. That's 23 places up from where he was five days ago.

Incredibly, he lost just one game out of 27 in total, across both rapid and blitz. He reflected at the award ceremony:

It's extremely satisfying. At the same time sometimes you can't believe it's happening with you. This was exactly the case, those five days how I played, how it went, everything was coming naturally.

He later added, "I saw myself as a strong player... but to achieve such a result, I couldn't expect [it]."

At the same time sometimes you can't believe it's happening with you.

—Vladimir Fedoseev

As a wildcard, he isn't scheduled to participate in other Grand Chess Tour events this year. But in terms of goals for the future, he said he would like to play in more tournaments with elites such as (he named these three) Carlsen, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Fabiano Caruana, especially in classical games. He said, "Since 2014 I was seen as a player who could make it to the elite group. It didn't go to my side for a long time. But seemingly I am now in good [form]."

The main question was whether Fedoseev could hold onto his 3.5-point lead from the day before, and he answered it very quickly.

He said he was lucky the previous day, and his luck carried over to game one against Vachier-Lagrave, where he won yet another lost position ("Picking up where he left off," said GM Yasser Seirawan). After a completely unsound sacrifice by Fedoseev, his opponent was an exchange up, but eventually lost control. In the mutual scramble, the French number-two gave the wrong check and froze when 47.Ra6?? was met with 47...Rd6!, the move he must have missed. From there, White won with the threat of checkmate.

Fedoseev called this game "a smile of God when everything goes your way," although that can be said of his last two days.

After a win against GM Aravindh Chithambaram, Fedoseev suffered his only loss of the event, against GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda. It was at least symbolic justice for the Polish number-one, who lost a two-pawns-up position on the previous day.

But it was back to winning after that for Fedoseev, first against GM Veselin Topalov and then in our Game of the Day against GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu. The highlight of that one was the jaw-dropping defensive move 22...Bd5!!, which received nothing but praise from the commentators. GM Dejan Bojkov analyzes it from start to finish below.

By this point, our question was certainly answered. If he lost his next four games and Aronian won all four of his, the worst fate for Fedoseev would be tied first. He went on to win three and draw one. Aronian, on the other hand, only scored one point out of the last four games.

The penultimate game ended with a nice, winning piece "sacrifice." By this point, Aronian was a half-point behind second-placed Vachier-Lagrave, and this allowed the Frenchman to push ahead.

With a final win against GM Alireza Firouzja, Fedoseev won the tournament with a resounding statement. 

MVL Wins Race For 2nd

Barring an utter meltdown from Fedoseev, the most the other players could hope for was second place. With that in mind, Vachier-Lagrave had a tremendous day—after losing that first game to Fedoseev, which he was winning. He won five games in a row, drew two, and finally won another against Aravindh.

The last game in that streak of five wins was against GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac, where Vachier-Lagrave essayed a modern concept in the Dilworth Variation of the Ruy Lopez, 17.b4, which had most recently been played by Nepomniachtchi.

Black's inaccurate 19...e4?!, followed by the true mistake of 21...c6?, allowed Vachier-Lagrave to show off the power of the bishop pair, with his unopposed dark-square bishop cutting through the position like a knife through butter.

Praggnanandhaa jumped into third despite losing four out of five games in the beginning. His game against Deac, the first of the day and a game Pragg lost, featured a comically chaotic time scramble.

Praggnanandhaa-Deac descended into chaos as pieces fell in time trouble! #GrandChessTour pic.twitter.com/ZOC4MoIHHQ

— chess24 (@chess24com) April 30, 2025

But he won his last four and thus continued the streaky play he showed on Tuesday. With his win in the last round against GM David Gavrilescu, Praggnanandhaa jumped just half a point ahead of Aronian, who had been in contention but floundered in the second half of the day.

Aronian showed a spark of brilliance in his last game, against Duda, but wasn't able to put away what could have been a masterpiece of an attack. Aronian got an extra, brilliant chance at the end, and the temporary queen sacrifice 37.Qg3!! would have been a gem, had it been played.

While it's a disappointing tournament for two-time GCT Champion Firouzja, who co-led early on but then collapsed in the blitz, it won't be long before he gets another chance. Bucharest is a week away, and he'll get the chance to prove himself against even stronger opposition and in the classical time control.

The 2025 Superbet Rapid & Blitz Poland was the first event on the 2025 Grand Chess Tour and ran April 26-30 in the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland. The 10 players first competed in a single rapid round-robin with a time control of 25 minutes plus a 10-second increment per move, followed by a blitz double round-robin with a 5+2 time control.

Previous coverage:

• Day 4: Fedoseev Bursts Out To 3.5-Point Lead Ahead Of Final Day
• Day 3: Firouzja Flags Vs. Aravindh, Misses Out On Winning Rapid
• Day 2: Firouzja Beats Praggnanandhaa To Catch Leader
• Day 1: Fedoseev Leads Firouzja, Pragg As 2025 Grand Chess Tour Begins In Warsaw
• Carlsen, Topalov Given Grand Chess Tour Wildcards