Reigning World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju has won the rapid title at the Rapid and Blitz tournament part of the 2025 Grand Chess Tour at Zagreb in Croatia. The 19-year-old Indian player defeated America’s Wesley So in the final round to seal the rapid section yesterday.
Gukesh defeated Wesley in 38 moves with white pieces to secure his seventh win of the rapid section. The 19-year-old scored 14 points out of a possible 18, to finish at the top of the standings. Jan-Krzysztof Duda of Poland is placed second with 11 points, with former World Champion and World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen of Norway third with 10 points.
The only other Indian in the fray, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, got nine points, to share fourth place with Fabiano Caruana.
The nine rounds of rapid action will be followed by 18 rounds of blitz in the tournament that gets underway today. In the Blitz section, four out of the five highest-rated players in the world are participating including, Gukesh Dommaraju, Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu.
Combined points from both Rapid and Blitz formats will determine the overall winner. The player with the most points combined at the end of the final day will win the overall title. This is the third tournament of the Grand Chess Tour 2025 calendar – the Poland and Romania editions finished in April and May.
Praggnanandhaa won the title at Bucharest in Romania and finished third at Warsaw in Poland. Two tournaments will take place in the US in August, with the final one taking place in Brazil from September to October, which will feature the classic, rapid and blitz sections.
