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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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© Dr Tim Harding
Last modified:
2 November 2025
For more information about chess for over-50s, please see our Seniors calendar and our main Seniors news page. Newcomers to 50+ chess should read our Seniors introduction page. We also have pages for specific British Seniors and Irish Seniors news.
The 2025 FIDE World Senior individual championships were decided yesterday in the 11th and final round at Gallipoli, Italy. We can now bring you the final results.
Everything in the two Open tournaments came down to the top games in the final round. The women's champions were known already but not the runners-up medals.
The top games in each section were broadcast daily on Lichess. (That links to round 11 in the 65+ but you can easily navigate from it to the other sections and other rounds.) The live games can still be downloaded but perhaps they will later become available ina more convenient form from The Week In Chess.
The pages with pairings and detailed results are at chess-results. This is where you should go if you want more detailed scores. That link goes to the 65+ Open but other tabs on the page will bring you to the 50+ Open and women's sections.
A blitz tournament was held on the first Sunday evening. This was won by Russian IM Oleg Kozlov with 7.5/8. GM Maxim Novik of Lithuania was second with 7 points.
In the Open 65+ there were four joint leaders on 8/10 going into the final round. Ukrainian IM Alexander Reprintsev played GM Zurab Sturua (Georgia) and German IM Christian Maier met IM Evgenij Kalegin of Israel. Both those games were drawn.
The six players on 7.5/10 met each other on board 3-5 and two of those games were decisive. American IM Mark Ginsburg beat Argentinian GM Daniel Campora and French GM Nikolai Legky beat Spanish GM Juan Manuel Bellon Lopez (the husband of GM Pia Cramling).
So six players including Ginsburg and Legky finished in a tie for first on eight and a half points.
According to the tiebreaks shown on chess-results, Reprintsev was placed first, taking the title of World 65+ Champion, a gold medal and also a direct grandmaster title. Sturua was placed second and Maier third. We understand from Maier that he has earned a grandmaster norm but a direct title is no longer awarded for second or third place.
On board 5 Israeli IM Nathan Birnboim drew with Dutch IM Gerard Welling so they finished on 8 points, along with Israeli IM Alexander Mikhalevski, who had been the leader at the half-way stage (after beating the new champion). He then fell back but did win his last round game.
The highest placed English player was IM Peter Large with 7.5/11 ahead of IM John Pigott who scored 7pts. IM Nigel Povah and FM Terry Chapman finished on 6.5 but it should be noted that Nigel met the strongest opposition of these four (including the new champion) and gained rating points.
Three other English players were also in the tournament. Hassan Erdogan scored 50%, performing well above his rating. Danish-based Michael Marshall scored 3.5 and Jon Konig 2.5.
When these championships were first announced, it said there were to be some prizes for the best players aged 75 or over but during the event we saw nothing on the official website.
A well-hidden tab on chess-results listed the scores of the 75+ players but we only heard about it yesterday. Even this morning, that linked to a file which has not been updated and shows only the standings after 10 rounds. That may have been corrected by the time you read this.
According to our calculations, adding the last round scores to that list, and checking with the final 65+ standings page, shows that the highest scoring 75+ player was IM Nathan Birnboim so congratulations to him. We think he can call himself the World 75+ Champion but thgat nbeeds confirmation.
The runners up GM Bellon Lopez, Brazilian IM Herman van Riemsdijk and Swedish IM Nils-Gustav Renman were half a point behind. They win prizes and we believe there were some other small 75+ prizes. This is an improvement on the old days when there was usually none or just one (often won by the late GM Vasiukov.)
Russian WGM Galina Strutinskaia won the Women's 65+ championship with two rounds to play because after round nine she was two and a half points ahead of the nearest challenger. Then her round 10 opponent forfeited. In round 11 she won with Black against WIM Martine Dubois (Monaco) and so finished on 10.5/11 which may be a record score for this event.
The games on boards two and three were drawn: GM Nona Gaprindashvili (Georgia) v WIM Annett Wagner-Michel (Germany) and WFM Mira Kierzek (Germany) v WIM Larisa Khropova (Russia). On the fourth board WIM Ludmila Tsifanskaya lost to Greek WGM Marina Makropoulou.
So the runners-up on 7.5/11 in tie-break order were Makropoulou (silver medal), Gaprindashvili (bronze) and Khropova (cash prize but no medal). WGM Tatiana Bogumil (Russia) was the only player to finish with 7 points. WE belioeve there was also a prize for the best woman aged 75+ and if so Gaprindashvili won it.
There were 18 grandmasters in the field of 151 in the Open 50+. Israeli GM Victor Mikhalevski emerged as clear victor with 9.5/11 after a last round win against American IM William Paschall.
On board 2, GM Paul Motwani of Scotland (who was on 7 points before this game) held the other overnight leader, Georgian GM Mikheil Kekelidzev to a draw. So Kekelidze finished in sole second place with 9 points.
On board three, Kazakh GM Murtas Kazhgaleyev lost with Black against GM Michele Godena of Italy. This meant that they tied on 8/11 and Godena took the bronze medal on tiebreak.
Eight players finished on 7.5 including Motwani who placed third in that score group (and a respectable seventh overall) on tiebreak.
There were a few other British players in this tournament. Jonathan Grant of Scotland (husband of the new Woimen's champion) scored 5.5/11. The English players were IM Graeme Buckley 7 points, Philip J. Crocker 6, CM Mark Josse and FM Mike Waddington both 5.5. The only Irish player in the Championships, Romanian-born Gabriel Mirza, managed 4.5 after winning his last two games.
The Women's 50+ champion is GM Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant from Scotland, who was the only British woman competing in the congress. She won the tournament with a day to spare as she had a lead of one and a half points after round ten.
In the final round, Arakhamia-Grant drew with v Czech WFM Martina Folkova and WGM Monica Calzetta Ruiz (Spain) drew with Israeli IM Masha Klinova.
On board 3, Cuban WGM Maritza Arribas Robina won with Black against WIM Sopio Tereladze (Georgia) while Swedish GM Pia Cramling won on board 4 against Ksenia Baglay, an untitled Ukrainian.
So Cramling took the silver medal on 7.5 on tiebreak from the Cuban, Arribas, who wins bronze. Five players finished on 7 points.
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