Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Future Chess Champion?
Held in Goa, India from 1 to 26 November, the FIDE World Cup 2025 was a 206-player field with eight rounds of single-elimination knockout. In each round, players face in two classical games of 90 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes to finish, and a 30-second increment from move 1. In case of a tie, they next play rapid and blitz games. Compared to the previous edition, time control for tiebreaks sped up. Rapid games used a control 15+10 (previous edition 25+10)
The venue was the Resort Rio in Arpora in the west coast of India. The prize fund was $2 million with winner receiving $120,000 and even first-round losers guarantee $3,500.
Two factors make the World Cup interesting. First, because it’s a great chance for less known titled players to face their top colleagues and surprise them with homemade novelties. Second, as in the previous edition, a new generation of young players took part with great success. One of them was the Turkish prodigy Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus who is progressing very fast. At the age of 14 he is ranked 68 in the world with rating 2651 (Nov,2025)
In fact, his game in round 1 against CM Nagi Abugenda from Libia was the most shocking of the day. Erdogmus won in just 17 moves with the black pieces. After the game he explained: “I thought it’s going to be a long game. I will try to beat him in the endgame, but somehow he just starts to play Qf3, h4, g3, starts to play very aggressive, but I think he missed …Ne5, and after …Ne5, I mean, it’s just losing. It was just an easy game.”
Although prize fund was attractive, another factor made the FIDE World Cup interesting. Top-3 qualified for the Candidates tournament 2026. It means that apart from the prize fund, the third-place match could potentially be more important for top players.
Erdogmus is young but ambitious and he admits that still has a long way until his Candidates tournament: “For Candidates, it’s early I think. I just want to play some good chess, win some Elo, that’s my goal for this tournament. And, in general, I want to become world champion, of course.”
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