The expectation was palpable. With 24 contenders—a veritable armada of talent—the FIDE World Cup 2025 in Goa was meant to be the crowning moment for Indian chess on home soil. Yet, as the final games concluded and the brackets narrowed down to the elite four, a brutal reality set in: 24 had become zero. Not a single Indian player secured a semifinal berth, marking an unexpectedly severe setback for the nation that currently boasts the reigning World Champion.
The Cruel Exit: Arjun Erigaisi and the Desire to Win
The final domino fell in the quarter-finals when Arjun Erigaisi, the last man standing, succumbed to China’s Wei Yi in the rapid tie-breaks. For Erigaisi, the consequence was immediate and severe: his path to the prestigious 2026 FIDE Candidates tournament has now been obstructed, postponing his World Championship aspirations by at least two years.
The irony of his downfall, according to his opponent Wei Yi, was the very ambition that fuels elite chess. Erigaisi, pushing aggressively for a swift win in the rapid format, “over pushed in a position that wasn`t conducive for it.” This strategic impatience led to a critical error, demonstrating the razor-thin margin separating genius from disappointment in high-stakes knockout formats.
The Structural Flaw: Variance Versus Superiority
Beyond the individual mistake, the overall failure demands a wider introspection regarding the structure of elite chess tournaments. This is not the first major event of 2025—the FIDE Grand Swiss being the other—where the highly-rated Indian contingent failed to convert their deep talent pool into top finishes.
GM Srinath Narayanan, captain of the Indian Olympiad Team, offered a compelling technical defense of the players’ performance, focusing on format variance. He likened the World Cup`s knockout structure to a tennis Grand Slam being decided by single-set affairs, rather than the customary best-of-five. When players have only one classical game with each color per round, the capacity for randomness—or variance—skyrockets.
“It’s only natural, and that shouldn’t be a metric to draw long-term conclusions from,” Srinath argues. “If we had at least four tie-break games, allowing two rotations with each color, the superior players would show their superiority more often. As it stands, the variance this format brings must just be accepted.”
Indeed, the variance was significant. Upsets were rampant, illustrating that ELO ratings offer little divine protection against a motivated opponent on a given day:
- World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju was ousted in the third round by Frederik Svane, who began the tournament rated 2638.
- Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, a finalist in the previous World Cup, fell in the fourth round.
- Nihal Sarin exited in the second round to Nikolas Theodorou (ELO 2652).
The World Cup, by design, cares little for seeding or reputation. It demands sustained, peak performance across seven grueling rounds. This leads us to the second, and arguably more insidious, factor.
The Price of Over-Saturation: The Insane Schedule
The performance slump across the two major late-year tournaments—the Grand Swiss and the World Cup—was not a coincidence. It was a structural oversight. As Srinath Narayanan noted, the schedule for India’s chess elite in 2025 has been “absolutely insane.”
The biggest names—Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, and Erigaisi—have participated in a relentless cycle of classical tournaments, the Grand Chess Tour, and the Freestyle Chess Tour. By the time the high-pressure, high-variance World Cup arrived, the mental and physical toll had clearly caught up with them. Exhaustion is a poor bedfellow for complex calculation.
In sport, talent is often the minimum requirement; strategic planning is the determinant of longevity and peak performance. The sheer volume of chess played by these young athletes, while demonstrating dedication, ultimately resulted in suboptimal performance when it mattered most—at a critical home event that offered qualification to the Candidates.
Introspection and Planning: The Path Forward
The disappointing outcome in Goa serves as a crucial, if painful, reminder. Indian chess possesses undeniable depth and star power, but sustained victory at the highest level requires more than raw genius; it demands careful managerial and logistical planning.
The focus must now shift to optimizing schedules. The upcoming year, 2026, features the highly important Olympiad in Uzbekistan and potentially a World Championship match involving an Indian contender. If the lessons of 2025 are heeded, the key will be less chess, strategically timed, ensuring that these young masters peak for the pinnacle events, not burn out across every circuit event.
The waiting game for the next Indian men’s World Cup winner—the successor to the great Viswanathan Anand—continues. 2025 taught us that even in a highly technical sport like chess, there are no divine rights. If you are not at your absolute best, there are enough opponents ready to capitalize on the smallest oversight.
