Round 8 RECAP | IM Sagar Shah | FIDE Grand Swiss 2025

Welcome everyone to the recap of the 8th round of the FIDE Grand Swiss. After the completion of this round, we have a sole leader in the women's section. It's Katrina Lagno who is on six and a half points out of eight. In the open section, the two leaders Nihal Sareen and Mathias Blubaum kept their lead intact. But the Chasers pack keeps getting bigger and bigger. Let's have a look at the game of Nihal Sareen and Mathias Blubaum which ended in a very, very quick draw. Nihal here with the black pieces took the pawn on d4 in the Queen's Gambit Accepted. This was also the line that he played against Gumulars. This is quickly becoming something that Nihal is putting his trust in and very solidly managed to hold a draw here. You can see he had a weak pawn but it was not sufficient for Mathias to get an advantage. In fact, the players very quickly repeated with the knight coming back and forth and this ended in a draw. We also had a very interesting idea that was played in the game between Jordan Van Forest and Shakriar Mamidiaro. Look at this game. In this position, from the Italian, white to play. Jordan plays this beautiful move. I think it was his opening prep. He goes g4 and after takes here, he finds this move, knight g5. And yes, the king has been weakened a bit but a knight is going to sit on e4 and actually, Jordan managed to play incredibly well here. And his knight just simply came here and white is completely winning. And Jordan managed to win this game taking his score to 5.5 points joining the pack who is half a point behind the leaders. Here's another game in the open section that is amazing. Erdogmus, Yaz Khan was able to beat Levan Aronian. Now, this young boy continues to keep impressing us and this is the moment where I thought something truly spectacular happened. Yaz has only 34 seconds on the clock. It's move 31 and Levan has just pushed his pawn to d4. And you know, he takes on f6, rook f6 and here manages to find this amazing move, rook e4 in just 2 seconds. What a nice tactical move. If knight e4, you have rook c8 with a mate which is the reason why Levan had to go e5. But after rook e5, Yaz was already winning and he went on to beat Levan Aronian. Another incredible result for the youngster. We had a huge, huge moment in the game between Vincent Kaimer and Vidit Gujrati. Vincent was on 4.5 points, Vidit was on 5. After reaching move number 40, we came to this pawn endgame. And here Vidit could have held the draw by finding the move, king d5. What makes it truly incredible this moment in this tournament is that Vidit had 50 minutes at this point to find the winning, find the only drawing idea which was king d5 and after this, the position is drawn mainly because when he comes here trying to win the g5 pawn, Vidit is in time with g4 and now after king d3, king f5. At the right moment, which is now, you have to break with b5 takes, a4 takes and now just c4 and the game ends in a draw. However, Vidit in this position blundered with c6 and the rest was easy. Vincent Kaimer couldn't believe his fortune here. He pushed the pawn to c4, then brought his king forward and then played g4 and broke in the center with d4. c5 was an excellent move and then before you knew it, he broke on the queen side and made the queen and this is a completely winning position. Vidit resigned here and Vincent Kaimer now moves on to 5.5 out of 8. And there was this very cool moment in the Anish Giri-Parham-Maksudlu game. Anish looked very very close to beating Parham here. In this position, Anish with black played bishop d5, almost trapping the rook on d6 with king e7. But it was not to be. Parham managed to somehow extricate himself from this difficult situation and in fact, in this position, Anish had chances to win, which could have brought him to 6 points along with Nihal and Mathias. But Parham defended very well and now both of them are on 5.5 points. So, that's the situation in the open. Nihal and Mathias are on 6 points and then we have Abhimanyu Mishra, Parham Maksudlu, Ali Reza Firuja, Abdul Sattarov, Vincent Kaimer, Hans Niemann, Anish Giri and Jordan Van Forest. Total of 8 players who are on 5.5 points. In the women's section, we have much less players at the top. But there is one player who's running away with this tournament and that is Katrina Lagno. And Katrina is currently on 6.5 out of 8. She played a beautiful game to beat Maria Muzichuk. Let's just have a look at this key moment. In this position, it's kind of even. Rook b2 by Maria and the game goes on. But she went f6 which was a big mistake weakening her position. Knight to g6 attacking the pawn on e6. And I think what was missed here was that bishop c4. Maria thought that she would get a very solid position here. But Katrina just broke in the center with d5. Very good understanding here. Takes. Rook takes even. And check. Queen e6 and queen f7. And it's all over because after rook b7 came a check and rook e7. And she had to give up her queen. And Katrina Lagno won this game and has managed to take the sole lead from Vaishali. Why did she manage to take the sole lead? Because Vaishali who was on 6 points out of 7 actually lost her game to Bibi Sara in this key moment where the position was around equal. Vaishali blundered with rook a d8 missing. Knight takes e5 by Bibi Sara. The key point being that rook takes d3 is met with rook takes c6. And if takes here, knight takes d3 and white is close to winning here. So, Vaishali actually moved her queen. But after this, white is a clear pawn up and went on to win the game. There was another very interesting endgame between Stefanova and Yuksin Song. Because the position was drawn in this rook endgame. And all that Stefanova had to do was bring her king back to b2 so that if the black rook ever goes to win the h3 pawn, you go and win the g7 pawn and it's a draw. But she blundered here with rook e4 and Yuksin played g5. A good move. And then check pushed the king back and the black king came inside. And this was a winning rook endgame. And both the pawns soon fell. And in fact, you didn't need two pawns. One pawn was enough. And Yuksin Song won. So, that is the situation in the women's section. You have Katrina Lagno on 6.5 points. Then Vaishali, Bibi Sara and Yuksin Song on 6 points. And then Tanjongi on 5.5 points. Followed by a pack of few players on 5 points. It's going to be super exciting to see who manages to come out on top in the last three rounds. In the ninth round, we have some very exciting pairings like Nihal Sareen versus Firuja. Nodirbek versus Bluebaum. Maksudlu versus Kaimer. While in the women's section, we have Katrina Lagno versus Bibi Sara on the top board. Vaishali versus Yuksin Song. Stay tuned for all the action. And follow the live streams on FIDE's channels. This is Sagar Shah signing off. Bye.