Also on the final day of the tournament, the players and fans were treated with a difficult and interesting starting position #909, this time picked by the Dutch television personality and model based in Hamburg, Sylvie Meis.

Once again, when the round took off, Gukesh and Firouzja were making several moves quickly (and also different moves from the rest!), while the other boards developed much more slowly. The same players who took a long time deciding on the first white move the other day were now sitting behind the black pieces and all were thinking about how to face 1.d4.

Abdusattorov was the first to make a decision, after 5.5 minutes, and went for 1…f6. Less than a minute later, his compatriot Sindarov went for 1…d6, but Keymer took a whopping 21 minutes before deciding on what was probably the best move 1…f5. (He did play 2…d5 almost instantly.)

In the confession booth, the eventual tournament winner said: “I am kind of getting the feeling that I’m starting to repeat myself but the starting position looked incredibly dangerous for Black. First of all it’s kind of fine because there are no immediate targets but this pawn on g7 is so hard to defend long-term that after 1.d4 it really wasn’t easy to find the first move.”

Caruana-Keymer ½-½ (0.5-1.5)

As it turned out, the tournament winner was the one who handled the opening position the best among the Black players, although he wasn’t so sure himself. In the confession booth, he said: “It’s possible what I did is not so great because it doesn’t really ‘feel’ good, I just don’t see an immediate problem. And I also didn’t really know what else to do.”

His opening setup worked, and his excellent reaction to Caruana’s creative play between moves six and eight demonstrated once again that Keymer was in fantastic form this week. He quickly managed to neutralize all possible active play from his opponent, and then had the luxury of repeating moves in a better endgame.

When the handshake was there, commentator Peter Leko, who is also Keymer’s trainer, rushed out of the studio and ran the approximately one hundred meters to the playing hall to hug his student there, a lovely moment of the day.

Drawing a game played at 99.5% accuracy, Keymer also had praise for his opponent, who won $140,000: “He was also incredibly resourceful,” he said. “This 6.c4 I had completely missed I have to say honestly. The engine is giving it a question mark but it seemed like a very interesting idea to me. It’s so complicated; it’s very hard to assess what’s right, what’s wrong and so on. I guess he must have missed 8…g5 because otherwise I don’t understand going 7.Ba4, 8.e4. It seems after 8…g5 the lines just work out for me.”

He added: “The good thing for me was that the critical phase was only a few moves long. As soon as I had found a few important moves, the position kind of played itself.”

Taking down Firouzja, Carlsen, Caruana in one tournament is quite the achievement. As commentator Tania Sachdev pointed out, that’s something few chess players can boast in their entire career.

“I think everything has been going rather smoothly in the sense that, of course I was under pressure quite a few times and I made my mistakes, but in general I always kind of managed to keep some sense of control or at least fighting spirit,” Keymer summarized the event.

Carlsen-Sindarov 1-0 (2-0)

It seems as soon as Carlsen was eliminated from the fight for first place, a fire started burning inside that brought the very best out of him behind the board. Another excellent win secured a 2-0 victory against Sindarov, who took home $60,000. Carlsen earned $100,000 and qualified in two ways for Paris: as the third placer in Weissenhaus, and on rating.

Carlsen also entered the confession again today: “I really like my position so far. I think one of the peculiarities of Freestyle is that the same structures normally in chess, they can be a bit different. I feel like in this case, his bishop on g8 is particularly atrocious, he will need a few moves to get that into the game while mine on g1 is kind of participating by attacking his pawn chain, well, in a more active way than his is.”

A lot more happened after that, including a lovely piece sacrifice, and Carlsen was always in the driver’s seat. Only about the very end he had some doubts: “He resigned and I didn’t really understand completely why,” Carlsen said in the community stream studio. “I think it’s quite clear that there are no significant winning chances for Black and I think part of it was just not wanting to sit there. But during the game I couldn’t see a clear knockout.”

Carlsen had some nice words for the tournament winner: “Honestly, if you judge by the quality of the play in the classical portion I think Vincent was the best. He beat myself, Alireza and Fabiano, which is unbelievably impressive. It’s almost as tough a road as you can imagine to victory.”

Carlsen also noted that today was his second game where he avoided a draw when a draw was all he needed. ”It feels more natural just to play it out because we are entertainers, one, and it’s also supposed to be fun to play, that’s why we have this format. I’m just trying to be a good example there. It feels incredibly interesting and rewarding to play these longer games and just to go into every single game not knowing what is going to happen but that you’re going to create something new.”

Nakamura-Abdusattorov 1-0 (2-0)

Like Carlsen, Nakamura has been showing excellent form in the fight for fifth place, in his case. He won his mini match 2-0 as well, securing $50,000, and the second game was even easier than the third. Perhaps a result of fatigue, Abdusattorov, who won $40,000, blundered terribly on move 14, missing a fairly basic double attack which left his position in ruins. Nakamura had no trouble finishing off the attack

Gukesh-Firouzja 0-1 (0.5-1.5)

After missing that endgame win the other day, Firouzja did manage to beat the classical chess world champion the next day to finish in seventh place. He earned $30,000, while $20,000 went to Gukesh. The game was initially quite equal for a while, but as soon as Firouzja could activate his pieces and the game became more tactical, Gukesh failed to find the most accurate moves.

This concludes the first leg of the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, and what a first event it was! Stay tuned for the second leg, which will take place April 8-15, 2025, in Paris, France.