Chessable Masters: Wei wins Play-In

by Carlos Alberto Colodro
2/18/2025 – The Chessable Masters Play-In saw 174 players compete for eight spots in the final knockout stage, where they will join top grandmasters such as Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura. Wei Yi secured direct qualification by winning the Swiss event, while the remaining seven spots were decided through placement matches. Five of these were resolved in Armageddon, with Sam Sevian's victory over Maxime Vachier-Lagrave standing out as the biggest surprise. Alongside Wei and Sevian, Yu Yangyi, Anish Giri, Andrey Esipenko, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Vladislav Artemiev and Alexander Grischuk also advanced.

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Eight GMs make it to the final stage

The second phase of the online tournament, the Play-In, featured 174 players competing for 8 spots in the final knockout stage, where they would join the likes of Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura in a 16-player double-elimination bracket. The Play-In consisted of a 9-round Swiss tournament with a 10+0 time control, followed by a knockout phase.

Wei Yi won the Swiss event after scoring 7/9 points and securing better tiebreak scores than Yu Yangyi, Dmitry Andreikin and Lu Shanglei. As a result, Wei Yi obtained a direct spot in the final stage, while the players who finished in 2nd-15th places competed in two-game matches to determine the remaining seven qualifiers.

Chessable Masters 2025

Out of the seven placement matches, five were decided in Armageddon following a 1-1 score in the two-game match. The biggest surprise came from Sam Sevian, who knocked out Maxime Vachier-Lagrave after winning the sudden-death tiebreaker with the black pieces. MVL's attack backfired in the deciding game, as he sacrificed material to open lines on the kingside with 19.Nxh6

Black emerged a piece up as White's attack soon faltered - Black had everything under control after 27...Rg6

Besides Wei Yi and Sevian, the other players who gained a spot in the final phase were Yu Yangyi, Anish Giri, Andrey Esipenko, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Vladislav Artemiev and Alexander Grischuk.

Chessable Masters 2025

Chessable Masters 2025

All available games - Play-In Knockout

Links - Champions Chess Tour 2024

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Topics: Champions Chess Tour 2025, Chessable Masters 2025, Wei Yi
Carlos Colodro is a Hispanic Philologist from Bolivia. He works as a freelance translator and writer since 2012. A lot of his work is done in chess-related texts, as the game is one of his biggest interests, along with literature and music.
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Video

60m The Two Knights

This entry into the 60 minutes series concentrates on the Modern variation of the Italian game where White opens the centre early : 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Nf6 4 d4 exd4 5 e5!. This line can be reached by various move orders, most frequently from the Scotch 3 d4 exd4 4 Bc4. It's a sharp variation and Grandmasters such as Evgeny Sveshnikov have used it frequently,with very good results. It's a perfect line for club players to adopt which is relatively easy to learn and which contains many traps. All the main responses are covered here, including 5...d5, 5...Ng4 and 5...Ne4 and the conclusion is that is is difficult for Black to equalize in a straightforward way. Problems are being posed, which over the board might prove tough to solve.