Prague Chess Festival: Aravindh Chitambaram finishes third; Gukesh ninth

The reigning champion Aravindh Chitambaram finished third in the 2025 Prague Chess Masters on Friday, scoring five points in nine rounds.

Aravindh ended the tournament with two consecutive victories, beating Jorden van Foreest and David Navara in the eighth and ninth round respectively.

Earlier, he had a disappointing start to the tournament, losing his first round match against Nodirbek Abusttarov. He, however, bounced back with a win over Hans Niemann in the second round and playing out a draw against Parham Maghsoodloo in the third round.

Aravindh, however, lost the way soon after with two losses in the next two rounds before a win against the reigning world champion and fellow Indian Gukesh Dommaraju put him back on track for a good finish.

Aravindh finished level on points with Maghsoodloo after nine rounds, but took the third spot on inferior tiebreak score.

Meanwhile, Gukesh had a sorry run in the tournament, finishing ninth out of ten players with just 3.5 points.

He beat David Anton of Spain in the final round with the black pieces for his first and only win in the tournament. He lost three matches and drew the remainder.

Divya Deshmukh finishes third

Meanwhile in the Challengers event, India's Divya Deshmukh finished third. She registered a final round win over IM Stepan Hrbek with the black pieces to earn a spot on the podium.

Her only other win in the tournament came over fellow Indian GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly in the fifth round with the black pieces. Out of the remaining seven matches, she drew six. Her only loss came against GM Zhu Jiner of China in the third round.

Deshmukh's five points put her a point behind the second-placed Daniil Yuffa and half-a-point ahead of fourh-placed Benjamin Gledura.

Ganguly, the other Indian in contention, finished eighth with four points. He registered two wins, four draws, and three losses in the tournament.