- By Vishal Pushkar
- Wed, 26 Nov 2025 10:41 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
FIDE World Cup 2025: Uzbekistan's GM Javokhir Sindarov became the youngest FIDE World Cup 2025 champion after defeating GM Wei Yi of China in the tiebreak on Wednesday. The 19-year-old beat Wei in the second Rapid Game of the tiebreak using black pieces. He is now the first Uzbek chess player to win the World Cup and take home a prize of $120,000 along with the newly named Viswanathan Anand Cup.
The FIDE World Cup 2025 was a single-elimination tournament that featured 206 players from 82 countries competing for glory and three spots in the Candidates 2026.
In the final, Sindarov quickly drew the two classical games against Wei. He relied on his Rapid skills to find a way to win against a player who hadn’t lost a single classical game in the tournament.
Wei was solid again with black pieces in the first tiebreak game. The engines indicated that Sindarov had a chance to find a winning sequence in the bishop-pawn endgame. However, his next move brought the game back to balance.
“Today, my plan was to stay solid whether it was 15-15 or 10-10 time control. In the second game, I felt that he was not confident and it was my time to take chances. My position was tricky and I even offered him a draw. But he decided to play for a win but had very little time and he missed my attack,” said Sindarov after the title triumph.
Asked about how he felt about being the youngest World Cup champion, Sindarov said, “I am very happy about that. But in my view, it is just a start of my career. I want to first be 2750 player and then play many tournaments and play World Championships. But I am very happy to be here and I will try to play my best in the Candidates as well.”
Sindarov also spoke about how playing in India has been quite fruitful for him and how India and Uzbekistan could be competing for a lot of honours in the future. “India seems to be bringing a lot of luck. Yes, last time when I was in India, I won the Olympiad. After three years, I have won the World Cup. I'm very happy.”
“India has a lot of very good players and the younger generation is also coming up too fast. In the next 10 years we will be fighting a lot for Olympiads and many other tournaments,” he added.