Is his intention today to play a long strategic game? Does he wish to play Bluebaum in his own strategic playground? Let's wait and see.
It has been regular moves of a Reti opening from both sides so far. It will be interesting to see what kind of position Keymer is aiming for in this crucial game.
Generally, the queenside knight is developed in the queen file on the second rank. Though Keymer has developed it in his natural square, this is not where he is generally brought out, as it tempts Black into pushing the queen pawn, gaining more space.
Interestingly, the move has been played before by Magnus Carlsen in a blitz game once, though not taken up much by his grandmaster colleagues at the top after that.
Played after five minutes of thought. Bluebaum decides to bite the bullet, not fearing Keymer's opening preparation, and go for the most logical continuation.
With this advance, Black gains space in the center, and he might as well seize the initiative if he manages to hold on to it. On the other hand, he is definitely bound to be fighting against Keymer's feared pre-game preparation, which is quite respected by the chess fraternity, powered by his illustrious coach, Peter Leko.
The move has been played only in a couple of amateur games, which means this is almost a new direction in the opening. Only, we don't see any great merit behind it. If black simply develops his pieces and sticks to the opening principles, he shouldn't have any trouble in addressing this creative-looking early knight sortie.
As we mentioned earlier, it could have been better for Black to develop his pieces and advance his pawns calmly, rather than bothering about the white knight who is coming out on an early sortie.
However, even this exchange doesn't give White any real advantage. After all, White's light bishop has his diagonal blocked, which almost always works in Black's favor, not handing white any advantage.
Keymer is playing lightning quick, whereas Bluebaum is obviously taking his time, though not in any drastic measure.
Even though we have already entered original territory, Black has nothing to fear here. After all, even if his center is broken up, Black doesn't have anything to fear greatly, as White's pawn structure and piece placements are nothing extraordinary.
Bluebaum decides to hold on to his advanced pawn in the queen file, which is not advisable. After all, White aims for an uneven pawn configuration in the center, and Keymer is sure to achieve it now.
As we remarked earlier, Black could have simply exchanged the pawns instead of the text move, developing his knight.
Keymer jumps at the opportunity and goes for a pawn capture. Now, White is bound to get a dynamic center with an unusual pawn push in the king file next.
The fruit of any opening preparation is to get a position not analyzed by your opponent, and Keymer seems to have succeeded in it.
And the best way to face any surprise in the opening is to trust yourself and stick to the basics. Bluebaum seems to have abandoned his caution here, it seems!
If you have followed Bluebaum's games in this tournament, he seems to love simplification. Keeping it cool seems to be his way of life!
Here too, it is not surprising that Bluebaum has gone with recapturing the white pawn with his knight, rather than with a pawn. After all, both moves are logically fine, and Bluebaum puts his trust in playing simple positions while playing this move.
As we suspected, Keymer avoids an exchange of queens, which he had foreseen in many continuations. Hence, he goes with a choice of moves that will keep the position as much alive as possible.
White's knight retreat also hinders the development of his own dark bishop. So, on the development front, both sides are equal now—white cannot claim any upper hand anymore.
We have seen in this tournament over and over Bluebaum coming up with solid moves, sticking to the basics of positional principles. Black simply develops his light bishop in the long diagonal, thus completing the final bit of pending development.
Black may even be threatening to gain the upper hand here, to attack the white rook with his bishop. Time for Keymer to be careful now!?
Keymer decides to play actively!
True to his natural style, Keymer decides to fight for an initiative, however much the position allows him to. By pushing the central pawn forward, he gains a mild bit of space for his pieces and also opens up the long diagonal for his bishop.
He also makes it clear that he is not worried about Bluebaum's planned bishop move to attack the white rook. This is active chess in such a crucial game!
Instead of moving his own rook, which has been attacked, Bluebaum opts to attack the white rook with his bishop instead. This way, black pieces will gain good placement for themselves while preserving certain freedom in their positions, avoiding crampedness.
Avoiding the exchange of pieces, Keymer saves his attacked rook. He will now aim to play for active positional play, preserving his queen and playing on the strength of his advanced central pawn.
Bluebaum has committed a minor error here, moving the rook to a square that won't be of much help for his future play. Now, Keymer has a chance to grab the initiative with precise play.
The attacked black knight goes back to its original square. Now, Black can proclaim that all his pieces are developed, but his queenside is mildly vulnerable to an attack by the white queen.
Keymer played this move almost instantly, which means he smells blood!?
The white queen does a double attack, threatening the black knight and the bishop. With this, he manages to gain the initiative, as Black is forced to go on the back foot now.
White will now be able to develop his knight and then his queenside pieces one by one. As we mentioned earlier, he might get a slightly better position due to the space advantage he has thanks to his advanced pawn in the center.
Bluebaum calmly returns his bishop back to the long diagonal, supporting his knight too in the process. This is a turning point, as White has to find a fresh direction, the best one at that, to find a way to play for an advantage in the position.
Such moments are always a test to a player's understanding of the game, as well as his creativity.
True to his talent for which he is praised, Keymer finds an active continuation in the position, swinging his queen over to the kingside.
The black kingside is relatively weak, unguarded by any of his pieces, almost. Though the white queen doesn't have anyone in his army assisting his onslaught, he can always bring more forces for reinforcement. This is typical of the Reti Opening, where White can suddenly drum up an attack on the kingside, especially when White has an advanced pawn on the king file.
This seems to be an unnatural move - after all, Black may not be able to drum up any counterplay on the queenside with this pawn thrust.
White has several ways to increase his advantage here - it will be crucial for Keymer to choose the correct one.
White opens up a window for his rook on the queenside. This is an excellent understanding of the position by Keymer. After all, only strong players know the art of playing on both flanks at the same time.
Apart from his advanced central pawn and activity on the kingside, Keymer now has a line open for his rook on the queenside. All is going well for the young German talent!
The white knight comes back to its natural square, and now White has a threat on the kingside with his dark bishop, attacking the black kingside.
The currently favorable conditions for Keymer are mildly overwhelming here. In this tournament, Bluebaum has never faced such difficulties in any of the games, as far as we can remember.
The black king steps sideways, avoiding an attack by the white bishop. Now, this is an important moment when Keymer has to continue playing active measures to keep up his initiative.
In an active position, it is obligatory for the side with an advantage to continue finding active moves. Otherwise, the opponent will be able to consolidate the position and achieve equality.
As we said earlier, this is an active ptiosatiitivoen., and White is obliged to continue playing for the initiative energetically, having a slight advantage. Keymer keeps up with the strategic principle and makes an attacking move on the kingside. Now, he threatens to take his knight forward, continuing with the fight for initiative.
Faced with a kingside attack, Bluebaum aims for a queen exchange. He may even achieve it, but he will be left with a strategically difficult position.
Pressure seems to have caught up with Bluebaum here, as his play in this game is significantly moderate compared to his earlier games. On the other hand, Keymer is playing with gusto, keeping up the pressure and playing dynamically.
Keymer decides to open up the flank on the queenside to get his rook ready to invade if given a chance. Pressure mounts on Bluebaum.
A curious fact: even though the White rook hasn't made any move in the game so far, it is still a key power in White's position now!
Keymer fails to find the accurate move in the position, allowing Bluebaum to exchange queens now. Instead of the bishop. it should have been the white knight that should have gone on the offensive on the kingside.
Black manages to exchange the queens off, but with a fluid pawn structure instead of a fixed one. In such a position, White will still retain a considerable advantage due to the superiority in pawn structure.
We have entered a queenless middlegame now, where White possesses a slight advantage due to his better pawn structure: White has two islands compared to Black's three. Also, White's pieces are better placed than Black's, who is suffering from being cramped for space.
This is good for white, but still not as good as the advantage when there were queens remaining on the board.
This is Bluebaum's specialty: to offer the best resistance where he has a minus position. The black knight takes a step back and supports the weak king pawn which was attacked by the white rook.
This is the position when Keymer has to step up and play his best chess, especially as White doesn't have any obvious ways to pursue an advantage.
Time and again in this tournament, we have seen Bluebaum defend slightly inferior positions, especially when there are no tactical operations. Has he found one today too?
The white rook gets active on the queenside, probing for weaknesses in Black's pawn structure. Keymer aims to create a light square weakness for black, soon aiming to exchange the light-square bishops.
This is a curious moment in the game: even though White has an advantage, it is not easy to find the best continuations here. Even though Black is passive, he has an easier life, as he simply has to defend wherever his weaknesses are attacked!
Though this pawn push doesn't look optically ideal, it is almost a forced move. Black would have liked to keep his pawn structure without any weaknesses, but is forced to do so.
Now it is up to Keymer to take advantage of Black's weakened pawn structure on the queenside.
Keymer fixes up the queenside with a pawn move, but that square belonged to the white knight! Keymer probably wanted to enter an endgame with Black's dark bishop being a 'bad' one - hence he has fixed the black queensidepawn on the dark square.
Now, White will find it difficult to find an active way to further his advantage.
The black knight evicts White's dark bishop from the kingside. Thus, Bluebaum aims to slowly get his pieces to better squares and resolve a certain crampedness in his position.
The black knight can move to the center now, in the long run, rather than being resigned to the first rank as earlier.
The wrong square for the bishop to return!
Now, Black need not defend the king's pawn as before. This gives Bluebaum the chance to challenge the white rook in the flank - a crucial tempo lost for white. The position is almost equal now if Bluebaum finds the resource.
Black immediately seizes the opportunity, challenging the white rook's domination in the queenside. As we discussed earlier, every exchanged piece brings down White's advantage by a little bit. We can say that White doesn't have any major advantage in the position anymore.
After exchanging a pair of rooks, Keymer forces the exchange of the light bishops also, aiming to saddle Bluebaum with a 'bad bishop.' The black pawns on the queenside being fixed on the same color, his bishop will find it difficult in the long run to make itself active. However, as a compensatory factor, the Black rook is active on the queenside now.
With more piece exchanges, the position has become even more level in assessment now. Bluebaum finds the best move in the position, concentrating on attacking White's weaknesses on the queenside rather than defending his own.
Keymer doesn't have a choice: if he defends his pawn on the queenside, his position might get passive. Hence, he goes for an attack on Black's queenside pawn.
There will be even more exchanges on the board now, leading to a clearly equal endgame.
The white rook threatens to invade on the seventh rank, aiming to exploit a weakness in Black's position: his inactive king.
You have to give it to Keymer: even when forced to accept an equal endgame, he finds a way to pose problems for his opponent.
White invades on the seventh rank with his rook, aiming to harass the black pieces. He has a dangerous gamble here, ignoring the strength of black's passed pawn in the queenside, and the fact that he is still a pawn down here, though black's queenside pawn is White's for taking.
With this capture, Black has some problems to solve now. Black is in danger of losing one of his central pawns, thanks to the passivity of the black knight.
Bluebaum allows the white knight to get active in the game now, attacking the black pawn in the king file.
Down to his last five minutes himself, Bluebaum commits a huge mistake, allowing White to run rampage into the black kingside now. Only, with low time on the clock, the question is if Keymer will be able to find the correct tactical moves to exploit Bluebaum's big mistake.
Keymer finds the best move in the position - he is threatening to win the pinned black knight now. Being at the square where he is attacking the black pawn on the kingside, the white knight will enable his side to win pawns on the kingside now!
What a turnaround!
White wins another pawn on the kingside now. Black will find it difficult to even salvage a draw.
Bluebaum finds a way to fight on: attacking the white pawn on the queenside, he wishes to eliminate all the pawns on the queenside and hopes to save the game with just one pawn deficit on the same side: the kingside.
Strangely, this was a huge mistake on Keymer's part. By concentrating on material gain, he missed a great chance to keep the black king passive and make his own king active.
Keymer should have captured with his knight here, leaving the black king open to further attack by the white pieces.
The white rook has captured a pawn on the kingside and now saves his own pawn on the queenside too. After saving the white pawn from dying, the rook will return to stop the black pawn on the queenside from advancing to the queening square.
However, the only drawback in this whole plan is that the black pawn moves too close to the queening square.
Just in time, the white rook stops the black pawn from queening. However, the endgame is not an easy win for White by itself. Unless Black makes a slip here, he still has chances to draw the position. After all, the white pawn on the queenside is not easily advanced further.
Not the accurate move?! Bluebaum decides to bring his knight onto capture White's passed pawn on the queenside. But the resultant rook endgame is tricky, as Black is a pawn less and also has a weak central pawn.
White wants to create threats against the black king, but this is not so dangerous. After all, Black can always activate his knight and bring it towards the center, thwarting White's ambitions of an attack on the Black king.
With both players getting tired after a long struggle and fried nerves, such mistakes are inevitable in a complex endgame!
The game is crucially poised. Every move from Black is crucial to maintaining his position, as he has a weak pawn in the center. White's main challenge is that, with the black knight soon occupying a great outpost in the center, he will find it impossible to activate his king. He will crucially miss His Majesty's services!
Bluebaum allows the white rook to penetrate into the inner ranks of Black's position. He should have stopped the white rook from getting so active.
This is not yet fatal, but this is a concession nevertheless.
As we remarked earlier, the position is defendable for Black, but a large degree of accuracy is still required.
Black challenges the white rook to go ahead with his plan of invading the kingside. But this is not so dangerous, as Black can easily defend the kingside pawn with a central pawn push. However, White can instead activate his knight and bring him to a central square now.
Instead of getting distracted by attacking the weak black pawn on the kingside, Keymer does a beautiful regrouping of his knight and brings it to the center.
The old maxim goes, "In many an endgame position, it is not always the material which decides the result, but the activity of the pieces." Thus, White strives to keep his knight active and centralized.
Black's position is not defensible anymore. His last chance was to stop the white knight from occupying the center, and Bluebaum errs in planning to stop the idea. The black knight should have gone to the queenside to stop the idea, not the kingside.
The white knight marches on towards the central square, from where he can execute multiple plans: attack Black's central pawn, attakc Black's kingside pawn, keeping the black king inactive...
Having achieved an important maneuver, it is now crucial for Keymer to work out the final assault. Still, he has to be a little careful not to allow any counterplay associated with Black's central pawn getting pushed further.
Bluebaum challenges the white knight to make his intentions clear. Now, Keymer has to decide concretely what to do with the knight - if he goes to the kingside to attack the black pawn, or else. Keymer has to come up with the right reply now.
This doesn't spoil the position, but the white knight doesn't achieve any objective by moving to the queenside. After all, Black's weakness is the kingside pawn, and that is what White should be targetting here.
Black's trap is based on the undefended position of the white knight. Keymer will have to be careful to sidestep it.
White chose the wrong moment to attack the rook pawn, with his knight being on the third rank, and black having the resource of an unexpected pseudo-sacrifice of the black knight! The twists and turns of this game is simply overwhelming!
Bluebaum spots the tactic, of course! He has thus saved himself the crucial half a point in this game!
White doesn't have any winning chances anymore, and the game is bound to end in a draw now.
Thus, the game has now fizzled out into a drawn rook endgame, after Keymer's tragic blunder.
Being on the brink of victory, Keymer allowed an almost simple shot for Black, getting into a drawn rook endgame.
From the beginning, though his play was not perfect, Keymer's ability to keep trying for initiative was admirable. Even when it looked drawish in an endgame with rooks, bishops, and knights, Keymer found an imaginative plan to gain an upper hand, with severe time pressure for himself.
But, after all the effort, the game tragically ended in a draw for him, after he overlooked a simple combination involving a double attack.
On the other hand, Bluebaum once again showed his mettle defending an inferior position, as he has done successfully throughout this tournament. But to do that, even when he had lost position, was beyond belief, even for himself.
Thus, with just one round to go, we have five joint leaders on seven points: Bluebaum, Firouzja, Giri, Niemann, and Keymer. May the best men get their berths to the candidates tomorrow!
(BTW, we start an hour earlier than usual tomorrow—set your clocks accordingly!)
The most important piece in this game is the Clock now! Keymer has only about three minutes on the clock to Bluebaum's nine.
He has under 10 minutes on the clock now, versus Bluebaum 's 15. This may be a dangerous time for the young superstar!
Update: Keymer has only about 5 minutes now!
Both players have around 20 minutes on their clocks right now, having completed 25 moves. Thus, they need to make another 15 moves to reach the 40-move mark to reach the first time control. For sure, there shall be a time scramble today; we only do not know the severity!?
Both Keymer and Bluebaum have only around 50 minutes left on the clock but have played only 16 moves so far. What can we say? The tension of the competition does make people cautious!
Bluebaum obviously faces the pressure now, as White is sure to develop his pieces fluently soon, enjoying his mild space advantage. The position does not seem to be ripe for tactics; it will be difficult for Black to defend easily here, as he cannot launch any counterplay.
This is the kind of position that Bluebaum has time and again handled well in this tournament. It will be interesting to see his choice of plan and move here.
This is getting quite serious. When one consumes so much time, it will affect the rhythm for the rest of the game. The thought that he took so much time will always be in the back of a player's mind, perpetually, which will be a psychological thorn.
The only explanation we can find for Keymer's huge time consumption is that he is probably concerned with an early queen exchange here, and hence, finding ways to avoid one?
Keymer has consumed more than 20 minutes on his clock now. Definitely, he is out of his preparation, which means he has to think and find the best continuation in the position instead of playing it out in a flash from his memory.
Bluebaum's choice of recaptuing the central pawn with his Knight seems to have caught Keymer unawares, as he has consumed more than ten minutes for his move right now.
Can we conclude that the surprising one's opponent has run its course, and both our protagonists are on equal footing now?
Welcome to the penultimate round of the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025!
Two games to go, top two places for grabs for the Candidates Tournament 2026, and we have four leaders on 6.5 points, and six of them breathing down their necks at six points!
As we hit the final two games, there is almost no point in analyzing the players' styles, opening repertoires, or their playing strength. What matters is how their nerves are holding up and how they have travelled in the tournament so far.
Matthias Bluebaum is definitely the revelation of this tournament! Rated 2671, there is no one lower than him in the rankings of the tournament till the 12th place, which should tell you how much he has pitched above his strength so far. He has remained undefeated so far, with notable wins over Praggnanandhaa and Erigaisi.
On the other hand, we have Vincent Keymer, who just entered the top ten in the world a couple of weeks ago. One of the brightest rising young stars of top chess, he has had a topsy-turvy tournament, with a loss in the middle of the tournament. He is suddenly on a finishing spurt, with wins over Vidit Gujrathi (thanks to a blunder in a king and pawn endgame!) and Maghsoodloo (through an amazingly complex tactical game) in the previous two games.
What would be noteworthy to have in our minds as we get ready are two important points:
1. Bluebaum just holds his ground without making any major mistakes, while almost never playing for the initiative, even when he can.
2. Keymer has not been consistent, but is capable of playing dynamically and forcefully against any opposition.
3. It is always tricky to play a fellow countryman! There should definitely be many undercurrents here, and I suspect they would favor Keymer more than Bluebaum! After all, the younger lot always have a psychological upperhand in any national scenario...
And there is always the perennial penultimate round logic: "Why take a chance today in this position, when I can give it all tomorrow?!"
So, we can expect nothing today—it all depends on the kind of middlegame on the board!