No Chalk, Three New Candidates Guaranteed as World Cup Heads to Semifinals

The upsets kept coming in the quarterfinals of the 2025 FIDE World Cup.

With Chinese GM Wei Yi’s elimination of second-seeded Indian GM Arjun Erigaisi in the first tiebreak, none of the four highest-rated players will be competing in the semifinals for the three available spots in the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament in Goa, India.

Despite having three of the four top-seeded players, no Indian players will be competing in the semifinals. And despite having 12 players in the event, including fifth-seeded GM Wesley So, no Americans made it to the semifinals, either.
The last USA player in the event, GM Sam Shankland, lost 4–2 to Russian GM Andrey Esipenko in the second tiebreak after two solid classical draws and a win-on-demand comeback in the first tiebreak.

SS3 — Photos courtesy FIDE/Michal Walusza.

SS2 — Photos courtesy FIDE/Michal Walusza.

In the first tiebreak, Esipenko won a nice game as Black after Shankland failed to generate any play out of the opening.

In the return game, Shankland got a promising position out of the opening and never looked back.

In the second tiebreak, Shankland came close to equalizing from a difficult position as White.

In the return game, Shankland went for a more hypermodern opening choice. There, one “automatic” move killed his chances of an initiative. After Esipenko stabilized, Shankland had to go down swinging, taking unsound risks.

A pair of Uzbek grandmasters — Nodirbek Yakubboev and Javokhir Sindarov — will join Wei Yi and Esipenko when play resumes on Wednesday. Yakubboev qualified by scoring the only decisive result of any of the classical matches after German GM Alexander Donchenko was unable to untangle his own pieces in a sharp line of the Benoni.

Nodirbek Yakubboev (L) won the only decisive classical game of any quarterfinal match, and now faces his Olympiad teammate Javokhir Sindarov in the semifinals after Sindarov's second tiebreak victory over Jose Martinez. (Photos courtesy FIDE/Michal Walusza)

JS1 — Nodirbek Yakubboev (L) won the only decisive classical game of any quarterfinal match, and now faces his Olympiad teammate Javokhir Sindarov in the semifinals after Sindarov's second tiebreak victory over Jose Martinez. (Photos courtesy FIDE/Michal Walusza)

Sindarov played the only other match to go to the second tiebreak, defeating Mexican GM Jose Martinez 3½–2½. Martinez actually struck first in the first tiebreak, but, after equalizing in the return game and drawing the first game of the second tiebreak, Sindarov emerged victorious after the second game of the second tiebreak.

Graphic courtesy of FIDE

In the semifinals, the two Uzbek players go head-to-head in the top half while Wei Yi and Esipenko square off in the bottom half. A loss does not eliminate any player from Candidates contention just yet, as the all-important third-place match will determine the final spot. Of the remaining players, only Wei Yi enters as a “single digit” seed, and none of these players have qualified for the Candidates before.