Vincent Keymer, who helped Gukesh win world title, clinches Weissenhaus leg of Freestyle Chess Tour 2025

Vincent Keymer was part of the team that helped Gukesh Dommaraju defeat Ding Liren in Singapore in December, helping the 18-year-old Indian chess sensation becoming the youngest world champion in the history of the sport in the process.

A month later, the two would cross paths at the 87th Tata Steel Chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands, where the two would have contrasting runs. While Gukesh would finish runner-up after losing to compatriot R Praggnanandhaa in the tie-breaks, Keymer would finish seventh.

The German Grandmaster, therefore, wouldn’t have imagined that in the opening event of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour in Weissenhaus that he would once again find himself at the opposite end of the standings compared to Gukesh – only this time he would finish on top.

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Home favourite Keymer capped off an extraordinary week at the Weissenhaus Private Nature Luxury Resort by defeating American Grandmaster Fabiano Caruana in the final on Friday by a 1.5-0.5 scoreline. Keymer had defeated the world No 4 in 33 moves on Thursday, and needed just a stalemate to collect the US$200,000 cash prize reserved for the winner of the Weissenhaus event along with 25 tour points.

Keymer wasn’t even among the top five at the end of the round-robin stage, in which Alireza Firouzja had finished as the joint-leader along with Javokhir Sindarov with Caruana at the third spot. Firouzja got to make the first pick when it came to the top four choosing their quarter-final opponents, and he named Keymer, almost as if he was expecting the least resistance from the 20-year-old.

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Keymer, however proved he deserved to be counted among the title favourites after knocking Firouzja out in the quarter-finals by a scoreline similar to the one against Caruana.

However, the biggest victory of his career occurred in the semi-finals when Keymer caught world No 1 and Freestyle Chess co-founder Magnus Carlsen by surprise in Game 1, forcing him to resign in just 39 moves to send shockwaves across the seaside resort located on Germany’s Baltic coast.

And to prove that the win wasn’t a one-off, Keymer would hold the five-time Classical world champion to a draw the following day to seal a 1.5-0.5 victory.