India has been the nation to beat in international chess since 2024, when the nation’s men and women teams won double gold at the Budapest Olympiad, while Gukesh Dommaraju became the youngest ever world champion at 18.
However, last week, when Germany’s Vincent Keymer, 20, won the Quantbox GM event at India’s chess heartland city of Chennai by a full two points with an unbeaten 2917 tournament performance, provided a major upset. India’s world No 4 Arjun Erigaisi, seeded to top the table, had to settle for third place and a drop to No 7 in the live ratings.
Meanwhile, Gukesh was competing at the St Louis Rapid and Blitz in the US, and finishing a long way behind the American pair of Levon Aronian and Fabiano Caruana. Gukesh’s form on the valuable Grand Chess Tour, sponsored by the billionaire FT reader Rex Sinquefield, has been so poor that only outright victory in the main event, the traditional $350,000 Sinquefield Cup starting 7pm BST Monday, can qualify him for next month’s Tour finals.
Keymer’s success at Chennai was significant in several ways. He reached the world top 10 Fide live-rated players for the first time, and his rating crossed the significant 2750 mark.
The tall German made a career breakthrough in February this year when he won the $200,000 Weissenhaus Freestyle Grand Slam ahead of the world top two, defeating Magnus Carlsen in the semi-final and Caruana in the final.
