GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu broke into the sole lead just before the final round of the Superbet Chess Classic Romania 2025. He defeated GM Wesley So from the black side of a Benko Gambit. There was one more decisive result: World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, also with Black, took advantage of GM Levon Aronian‘s unsound pawn sacrifice to score his first win and climb out of last place.
The last round is on Friday, May 16 and starts one hour earlier. That’s at 7:30 a.m. ET / 13:30 CET / 5:00 p.m. IST.
The two Indian grandmasters in the tournament both scored wins with Black in round eight.
Round 8 Results
The former co-leaders, GMs Alireza Firouzja, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, and Fabiano Caruana, are just behind Praggnanandhaa.
Standings After Round 8
So 0-1 Praggnanandhaa
A win, with the black pieces, against one of the world’s most solid players was unexpected, Praggnanandhaa said, “but it’s nice to have this in the bag.” He goes into the last round with a half-point cushion, so a draw with White against Aronian means he’ll at least make it to playoffs.
As for his game against So, he and his second settled on the Benko Gambit with Black, an opening that’s not so common at the highest level. He quipped, though: “We should make the Benko the new Berlin in d4!”, referencing the Berlin Defense that’s become a popular choice against 1.e4 due to its solidity.
We should make the Benko the new Berlin in d4!
—Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu
Sacrificing a pawn with the black pieces isn’t to everybody’s taste, but Pragg said, “It’s not really like I’m risking too much,” adding that even if White is very well-prepared “it’s not easy to find all the accurate moves over the board, so I think that’s what happened.” Although So hit him with the challenging 13.Ne5, Praggnanandhaa managed to reach a heavy-piece endgame with a slight advantage where he said, “White shouldn’t be worse, but it’s not easy to find a bailout.”
GM Rafael Leitao analyzes the full Game of the Day below.
Aronian 0-1 Gukesh
Winning the tournament is out of the question for either player, but ending on a high note is the best one can do. Despite having one of his worst tournaments ever (according to Svidler), Gukesh may still finish on a high note.
The critical moment, and mistake, of the game was Aronian’s pawn sacrifice 16.f4?, after which Gukesh said “the game got interesting.” It’s possible Aronian mixed something up because the engine severely dislikes the sacrifice, and Gukesh converted the advantage with his trademark, precise calculation.
Gukesh, coming into the tournament as the top seed, is now on 3.5/8 but can at least finish on 50 percent if he wins again on Friday. The same goes for Aronian, who’s on the same score and will have Black against the tournament leader.
Caruana ½-½ Vachier-Lagrave
The sharpest opening was surely this one, which started as an English Opening Adorjan Defense, which GM Peter Svidler was proud to say was the recommendation in his Grunfeld Chessable course. Vachier-Lagrave indeed followed Svidler’s line from the course for the first eight moves, but his deviation with 9…d6 (instead of the recommended 9…Qe7) was something Svidler specifically warned against. Did MVL have a different opinion, or did he mix things up?
We got our answer two moves later, when Vachier-Lagrave’s 11…Nf6? could have been a decisive mistake already. Caruana achieved a big advantage and missed a few wins—The line starting with 21.Bxc5 was, according to Caruana, probably the most findable. But, ultimately, Vachier-Lagrave escaped; the key move was 21…Kf7! that solved all of his problems.
This means that, if he wants to win the event, Caruana’s in a must-win situation with the black pieces against Gukesh next.
Firouzja ½-½ Abdusattorov
Firouzja may have also missed some small chances in his game against GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov, though he was never close to a winning advantage. We saw the Uzbek number-one repeat the same opening he employed against Vachier-Lagrave in round six, though this time instead of agreement to a draw on move 10 we saw a full-fledged fight. It was an Accelerated Sicilian Dragon, with White going for a Maroczy Bind.
By move 32, Firouzja was sure he had the advantage, saying, “I am better here for sure because my structure is better and my king is safe already.” And even when that slipped, he said “I thought I outplayed him [again] after the time control.” At every turn, however, Firouzja’s advantage wasn’t more than slight, and Abdusattorov held the draw.
Duda ½-½ Deac
An underdog on paper, GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac has had a great tournament so far—and, arguably, could have even done much better if not for scenarios like game one, where he made a one-move blunder. He held comfortably against the Four Knights Scotch, GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda weapon of choice, to stay a point behind the leader. This was the only game that didn’t feature much of a fight.
There’s a world in which Deac ties for first—that is, if Praggnanandhaa loses his game and if Deac beats Firouzja. As for Duda, he’s alone in last place and will be facing Vachier-Lagrave—who must win—in the last round.
The stars have aligned quite well for Praggnanandhaa, considering two of his trailers have Black in round nine. But let’s remember that last year Caruana was in the sole lead and lost his final classical game. He salvaged the title by winning the playoffs.
Whether we’ll have an outright winner or whether it’ll be decided by playoffs remains to be seen. Catch the action on Friday, one hour earlier!
How to rewatch?
The 2025 Superbet Romania Chess Classic is the second event on the 2025 Grand Chess Tour and runs from May 7 to 16 at the Grand Hotel Bucharest in Romania. It’s a 10-player round-robin with a time control of 90 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 30 more minutes for the rest of the game, plus a 30-second increment starting on move one. The prize fund is $350,000.
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