Alireza Firouzja won the Chennai Grand Masters tournament on Wednesday after a draw in the final round against Arjun Erigaisi, and Nodirbek Abdusattorov's loss to Dmitry Andreikin. Firouzja joins Gukesh Dommaraju, Aravindh Chithambaram and Vincent Keymer as winners of this tournament, whose fourth edition has once again produced some exciting chess between some of the best players in the world.
However, the organisers of the tournament, while acknowledging the tournament now has a space of its own, want more. GM Srinath Narayanan, a key member of the organising team, sees the potential for this tournament alongside the Tata Steel Masters in Wijk Aan Zee, Norway Chess, UzChess, and the Sinquefield Cup to form a collective akin to the grand slam tournaments in tennis.
Srinath and Sreekar Channapragada, co-founder of MGD1, the company that organizes Chennai Grand Masters tell ESPN that success in future editions of this tournament will be defined by the number of best players in the world they can attract to play in Chennai, which is the nerve centre of Indian chess.
Right now, the tournament offers FIDE circuit points in the quest for players' qualification to the Candidates tournament, but both Srinath and Sreekar speak of Norway Chess as being the event that they aspire to be. Every elite player in the world wants to be at Norway Chess, soon they want that to be true of Chennai.
Norway Chess has been running 13 years now, and they have the biggest attraction, which is the almost-guaranteed participation of Magnus Carlsen. Playing against Carlsen makes it an attractive prospect for so many elite players around the world.
In its four years so far, the Chennai Grand Masters has shown that there is no dearth of elite talent that comes to this event, but Sreekar says there's no one like Carlsen.
"It's always Carlsen," he says, "it's always Carlsen.
"I think the year we get Magnus to come and play Chennai Grandmasters is the year we feel that we would have, kind of, taken a step towards where we want to be."
To that end, Sreekar also added that they would be willing to make some concessions, with respect to tournament format or time controls, if that is what it takes to bring Carlsen here.
"Maybe we might think of going for the new time control. The 45 minutes (+30 second increment, which FIDE calls fast classical), we're thinking about it because that makes it shorter, more exciting, more results, things like that," Sreekar says.
Colors fading beyond the board ❤️��#quantboxcgm #chess #chesstournament @DGukesh @NodirbekGM pic.twitter.com/9XZniETjtS
- Quantbox Chennai Grand Masters (@Chennai_GM) July 21, 2026
That is something American GM Hans Niemann agrees with too, saying that chess needs to shed its aversion to the purity of the classical format, and move towards a result-oriented sport that doesn't do too many draws. At Norway Chess, there are no draws, because armageddon games are used to decide every game that ends in a draw. Niemann says every tournament, including Chennai in the future, must move towards.
This year, invitations had gone out to Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, and world championship challenger Javokhir Sindarov. Carlsen declined due to some personal commitments, Caruana didn't want to travel far before a series of the tournaments in the USA next month, while Sindarov chose to stay away this year, citing his calendar, ahead of the world championship match.
However, in Firouzja, Abdusattorov and Arjun, three of the top ten in the world were here in Chennai this week, and so was world champion Gukesh, which is a hugely positive sign.
According to Srinath, if Chennai Grand Masters and other popular tournaments want to counted as grand slams, they would all have to come under one umbrella, and the Total Chess Championship, which pilots in Budapest later this year, could be the right avenue.
The tournament is a new initiative to combine talents of the three chess formats of classical, rapid and blitz into one tournament tour. According to the new FIDE regulations, the Total Chess Championship offers two spots at the next FIDE Candidates tournament, so there could be an avenue to make it a year-round tour, like the Grand Chess Tour, where these elite events combine to have an integrated scoring system, that feeds into a larger purpose, like qualification for the Candidates tournament.
"Without an integrated scoring system, any such idea will not take off," Srinath adds.
In addition to the potential that the Chennai Grand Masters has for world chess, Sreekar says one of their core aims continues to be providing a platform for the best of India.
"We want stories like Pranesh to keep happening," Sreekar said. Pranesh had won the Challengers section of the tournament to qualify for the Masters event this year and put the icing on his cake by beating world champion Gukesh at the tournament.
The Challengers couldn't happen this year due to operational constraints, largely stemming from not having the field for the Masters confirmed in time. "Actually, initially just to get the masters players in place, it took us a lot of time. Post that we weren't left with a lot of time to inform the challengers or organise it as such," Sreekar said.
Four editions down, many more to go, much higher levels to hit certainly seems to be the message from the organisers of the Chennai Grand Masters.