FIDE Grand Swiss 2025: Vaishali in sole lead in women’s section; Gukesh beats Yuffa in round 3
Defending champion and Grandmaster R. Vaishali jumped into the sole lead in the women’s section as she notched her third straight victory with a win against Olga Bedelka of Austria in the third round of the FIDE Grand Swiss here on Saturday.
On a day when Vantika Agrawal found the going tough and went down to Yuxin Song of China, D. Harika was held to a draw by Guo Qi of China. Both Vantika and Harika are on 1.5 points apiece, while Vaishali enjoys a half-point lead over her nearest rivals.
In the open section, world champion D. Gukesh punished some audacious play by Spaniard Daniil Yuffa and moved to 2.5 points out of a possible three.
Playing with black pieces, Gukesh opted for the Ragozin defence and was pleasantly surprised in the middle game as Yuffa went berserk with his attack.
Winning a piece, Gukesh had to find some defensive moves and won an easy game in the end.
Major results, round 3 (Indians unless specified)
Open:
Alireza Firouzja (FRA, 2) Parham Maghsoodloo (IRN, 2); Arjun Erigaisi (1.5) Anton Demchenko (SLO, 2); Boris Gelfand (ISR, 1.5) R Praggnanandhaa (1.5); Daniil Yuffa (ESP, 1.5) lost to D. Gukesh (2.5); Nodirbek Abdusattorov (UZB, 1.5) Abhimanyu Puranik (1.5); Leon Luke Mendonca (2) drew with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (FRA, 2); Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (2) drew with Alexandr Predke (SRB, 2); Nihal Sarin (1.5) Yuriy Kuzubov (UKR, 1.5); Aryan Chopra (1.5) drew with Amin Tabatabaei (IRN, 1.5); Raunak Sadhwani (1) lost to Andy Woodward (USA, 2); Nils Grandelius (SWE, 1) lost to Aditya Mittal (2); Dmitrij Kollars (GER, 1) V Pranav (1); S L Narayanan (1.5) drew with Theodorou Nikolas (GRE, 1); Jakhongir Vakhidov (UZB, 1) playing P Harikrishna (0.5); Divya Deshmukh (0.5) playing Murali Karthikeyan (0).
Women:
R. Vaishali (3) beat Olga Bedelka (AUT, 2); Yuxin Song (CHN, 2.5) beat Vantika Agrawal (1.5); Guo Qi (CHN, 1.5) drew with D Harika (1.5).
Published on Sep 06, 2025