Germany’s Vincent Keymer, 20, has laid down a marker for the 2026 world candidates and title match by routing some of India’s best grandmasters at the Quantbox GM tournament in Chennai, the heartland of the Olympiad champions and the home of the world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju.
Keymer’s score was an unbeaten 7/9, while his winning margin was a full two points. In contrast, India’s Arjun Erigaisi finished third on tie-break and dropped from No 4 to No 6 in the Fide live ratings, while Vidit Gujrathi, a 2024 world title candidate, had a minus score.
Since 2024, when the nation’s men and women’s teams won double gold at the Budapest Olympiad while Gukesh became the youngest ever world champion at 18, India has been the undisputed top chess nation. However, Gukesh, who has struggled this summer on the St Louis-based Grand Chess Tour, started badly this week in the tour’s main event, the $350,000 Sinquefield Cup, which can be followed live daily from 7.30pm.
Gukesh lost easily to his main rival, Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, in a Nimzo-Indian 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4 which soon transposed to a Queen’s Gambit Accepted. Ivan Sokolov, the elite trainer, summarised the game: “Pragg [finally]decided not to fight Gukesh on his turf, not to enter chaotic positions [where calculation decides]. Result – Pragg’s technical masterpiece!”
Gukesh, who later described his defeat as “probably one of the worst games I’ve played” erred early with 13…Ba7? instead of 13…Be7, and the Stockfish evaluations told the story: by move 17 White was +1.26, by move 24 +2.24, by move 28 + 3.02, and by move 36 +5.01. Round two went better for Gukesh, who defeated the tailender Nodirbek Abdusattorov, but after three rounds he remained on a modest 50% total.
Praggnanandhaa, meanwhile, advanced to No 4 in the live ratings, his highest yet. Keymer and Praggnanandhaa are the two players in form among the world top 10, both with gains of 30+ rating points in the past year.
Keymer’s success at Chennai crossed two significant career milestones , as he reached the world top 10 Fide live-rated players for the first time, and his rating passed the 2750 mark.
The German made his career breakthrough in February when he won the $200,000 Weissenhaus Freestyle Grand Slam ahead of the world top two, defeating Magnus Carlsen in the semi-final and Fabiano Caruana in the final.
Keymer is the first German to reach the world top 10 since the late Robert Hübner, whose peak was No 3 in 1980. His ambition now is to qualify for the 2026 candidates, then to win the candidates and become Gukesh’s challenger.
Keymer has an individual playing style. He considers strategic risk assessment to be very important, deciding when to deviate from the most objectively sound moves so as to maximise his chances of provoking errors from his opponent. He points out that this is how today’s young GMs differ from their predecessors, who in a field of 2750s would aim for plus two and no defeats, whereas in the past two years Erigaisi has reached 2800 in Opens by playing for a win in every game.
The German’s career has progressed more slowly than some of his contemporaries and rivals, owing to his commitment to completing his education rather than going straight into full-time chess. He has even needed to take school written and oral exams immediately before major tournaments.
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His parents are professional musicians, living in a small town an hour’s drive from Frankfurt, and before he discovered chess he seemed set to follow them, winning first prize as a pianist in a Youth for Music competition.
In a previous generations, chess and music had a stronger connection. The world champion Vasily Smyslov and title candidate Lajos Portisch sang to professional standards, while Mark Taimanov, Bobby Fischer’s 6-0 victim, alternated as a grandmaster and a concert pianist.
Keymer’s chess career took off in 2018 when, aged 13, he won the Grenke Open ahead of 49 GMs with a 2796 performance. He is helped by his long-term coach, Peter Leko, whose deep chess understanding is apparent in his online commentaries.
As Keymer explained to the editor of New In Chess, Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, in a recent interview: his model is Carlsen, Norway’s world No 1, who is “very, very classical. His knowledge about past games and structures is unmatched.” The Indians, in contrast, “work a lot, the amount of knowledge they have is huge, but most of that is not classical games, it is puzzles and calculation exercises. That’s what they grew up with, while I developed using a more classical approach, watching DVDs with the best games of all time.”
It is still an outside chance, but Keymer may have an opportunity to change the seemingly inexorable course of chess history by advancing further into the world top 10, succeeding Carlsen as western European and world No 1, and defying the now conventional forecasts that chess in the 2020s and 2030s will be dominated by Indian, Chinese and central Asian grandmasters.
3986 1…Ng4! 2 Qh4 Qf4! 3 Bd3 (if 3 Rxf4 Rc1+ mates) Rc1! 4 Rg1 (4 Kg1 Qe3+ 5 Kh1 Rxf1+ 6 Bxf1 Nf2+ 7 Kh1 Nh3++ and Qg1 mate) Qxh2+! 5 Qxh2 Nf2 mate.
