Keymer, Shankland Take Early Lead; Aravindh Survives
GMs Sam Shankland and Vincent Keymer won in the opening round of the 2025 Prague Chess Festival Masters. Shankland's victory was the second game to end, when one mistake led to a breezy endgame win against GM Ediz Gurel, while Keymer grinded a long, spectacular Game of the Day against GM Wei Yi.
The other three games ended in draws, with GM Aravindh Chithambaram pulling off a great escape from a lost position against Czech GM Thai Dai Van Nguyen, who nearly scored the day's third decisive game on his home soil.
Round two is on Thursday, February 27, starting at 9 a.m. ET / 3:00 p.m. CET / 7:30 p.m. IST.
Masters: Slow Start, Wild End As 2 Leaders Emerge
Wednesday was a slow-burner, besides Shankland's relatively quick win against Gurel. For a long while it looked like we'd see draws on the other boards, but things heated up and we could have potentially seen blood spilled on every board.
Masters Round 1 Results
This means that Shankland and Keymer are in the lead, but there are still eight long rounds to go.
Masters Standings After Round 1
The Prague Chess Festival returns to the Don Giovanni Hotel for its seventh edition. The Masters boasts an average rating of 2706 and an average age of 27, with a healthy mix of veterans and youngsters. 39-year-old Czech number-one GM David Navara is the most senior player, while 16-year-old Turkish GM Gurel, who qualified by winning the Challengers last year, is the youngest.
The returning players from last year are GMs Van Nguyen, Navara (both Czech players have played every edition), Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, and Keymer. Notably absent is GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov who, in a dazzling run to the world number-four spot, won last year with a round to spare.
Let's jump into the games.
Keymer 1-0 Wei
It was the longest game of the day and the best. Keymer came in hot from winning the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Weissenhaus—ahead of the world's best players including GMs Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, and Fabiano Caruana.
His performance against the tournament's top seed and Chinese number-one showed that he's still in that same form.
Keymer steered the game into theoretical waters of the Nimzo-Indian Defense with 5.e4, and Black's 16...Raf8 was the first new move. After Keymer's response, 17.h4, one might believe that White had started in a Chess960 position, with his king strangely stowed away on g1.
In a complicated endgame, it seemed Wei had escaped the worst, but 47...Be4? was surprisingly a mistake that gave the German number-one new hope. Suddenly themes of checkmate started hanging like dark clouds over the black king, and these motifs ultimately decided the game with a fantastic checkmate pattern materializing on the last move.
GM Rafael Leitao analyzes the full Game of the Day below.
Shankland 1-0 Gurel
Shankland, who won the tournament in 2021, was up against the youngest participant in the field. The year before, Gurel won the Challengers to qualify for the Masters—and he also earned his grandmaster title in that same tournament along the way.
The American grandmaster opted for the trusty London System but was met with an early surprise when Black played the anti-positional-looking 7...c4!?. Releasing the tension so early can backfire in other positions, but the move gains space and will be followed up with ...b5-b4. "Principles" and whatnot aside, the move simply works and it's been played dozens of times.
In an already difficult position much later, Gurel's decisive mistake was 34...f5?, and he collapsed quickly as he was unable to remedy the pin on the d7-bishop. The only way to hold was finding three only moves in a row: 34...Rc8 35.Qb7 Kf7! 36.Rd1 Ke8!, and indeed it is the king, as a defensive piece, that holds the black position together.
Aravindh ½-½ Van Nguyen
This was the closest game to being our third decisive result. Van Nguyen, who just won the 2025 Tata Steel Chess Challengers, continued to show exceptional form—at least until he hit severe time trouble. It's his fourth time in the Masters and he finished second last year.
Van Nguyen gained an advantage on move 20, but the game took on a long maneuvering phase all the way until the pawn break 62...e5!, hours later. The good news was that Nguyen still had his advantage, but the bad news was he had about four minutes left against almost half an hour.
The most dramatic moment of the game came when Aravindh, playing against his opponent's clock, blitzed out a losing move in under a minute of his remaining 20. After 65...Qf5? 66.Rc1??, Van Nguyen blitzed his prepared tactic, 66...Rxc3! and was again winning.
But then a final twist: with 34 seconds, if Van Nguyen kept the tension with 70...Bd6 or 70...Bb8 he would have likely won in a few moves. Instead, he grabbed on e2 and all that came of it was perpetual check.
It's a dreamlike save for Aravindh, who has won 100% of the super-tournaments he's played in, IM Sagar Shah pointed out. (The kicker is that he's only played in one: the 2024 Chennai Grand Masters.) Saving the half-point could become critical in keeping that record. As for his goals for 2025, he said an interview on opening day that he wants to make it to the Candidates—"it's reachable, I guess."
Le ½-½ Giri
This was the first game to end, but it was also the first to feature a mistake. GM Anish Giri, one of the world's leading experts in openings, was in trouble before move 10 in a Queen's Gambit Accepted. Something about GM Liem Le's rare 7.Nbd2 must have confused the Dutch number-one, as two moves later the latter made a positional mistake.
After 9...bxa4? Le had a clear advantage but had to find (or properly assess) 12.Na5!. Even after he missed that, he had a few chances to play Nc5 and net the bishop pair, but once the queens were traded the game eventually progressed to its peaceful conclusion.
The half-point should be a significant relief for Giri, while for Le it's a missed chance but still a reassuring start. It's not often you achieve an opening advantage against Giri, or any 2700+ player, on move 10.
Praggnanandhaa ½-½ Navara
Praggnanandhaa, coming off of his win in Tata Steel Chess, is the second seed in the tournament. The Indian grandmaster had clear advantages at two points in the game: first when he could have transitioned to a pleasant isolated queen's pawn position with 16.Kf2 or the more tactical 16.Nf5!. After that, he did win a pawn but didn't find the most accurate follow-up.
Eventually, Navara held a three vs. four pawns rook endgame without any trouble.
Keymer will have the white pieces against a potentially spooked, potentially reinvigorated, Aravindh. Meanwhile, Shankland will have the black pieces against Van Nguyen, who outplayed his first opponent even if he missed the win at the end. We may also see a "Pragg Chess Festival" in that youthful matchup with Gurel!
Pairings For Round 2 | Masters
Challengers: 2 Leaders, Maurizzi Escapes An Early Upset
Like at Tata Steel Chess, there is a Challengers section and even a Futures section for youth under 12. The winner of the Challengers advances to the Masters, while the winner of the Futures will play in the open masters tournament in 2026, with GM norms available.
If judging by recent performances, GM Marc'Andria Maurizzi was the most intimidating player at the start of this Challengers tournament. The 17-year-old dominated the Djerba Chess Festival that ended just days before this one, winning by a 1.5-point margin and with a 2900 performance.
We saw two decisive results, though we could have again seen a third. In the only outright miss of round one, Czech IM Richard Stalmach achieved a winning position against the high-flying Maurizzi, but he had three minutes against 35 left to convert it. Thanks to the time factor, the French GM slipped away with a draw.
Top-seed GM Jonas Bjerre won in 29 moves against GM Stamatis Kourkoulos-Arditis in a sharp, opposite-sides castling Sicilian Najdorf. GM Ivan Salgado Lopez handed an early loss to IM Divya Deshmukh by winning a sharp endgame.
That leaves two players in the lead of a nine-round race.
The two leaders will already be paired in round two, while another strong matchup to keep an eye on will be Maurizzi's encounter with GM Nodirbek Yakubboev.
Pairings For Round 2 | Challengers
How to review?
You can check out the games on our dedicated events page.
The 2025 Prague Chess Festival takes place on February 26-March 7 at the Don Giovanni Hotel in Prague, Czech Republic. The format is a round-robin with 10 players. The time control is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 more minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment per move starting on move one.
