Levon Aronian

The player who beat Magnus Carlsen outright at the one Grand Slam event Carlsen didn't win in 2025 — and did it without losing a single game across four days.

By Carl Brodsky

In Chess960

Aronian beat Carlsen head-to-head at the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Final in Cape Town, going the entire event unbeaten to take it — the one leg of the five-event season Carlsen didn't win. He also won the Las Vegas leg outright. Across the season he finished runner-up to Carlsen in the overall standings, ahead of Fabiano Caruana in third. He did not play in the 2026 FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship field covered elsewhere on this site.

Outside Chess960

Aronian, born in Yerevan in 1982, has represented Armenia for most of his career and the United States since 2021. He became a grandmaster at 17 and reached a peak classical rating of 2830 in 2014 — at the time the fourth-highest ever recorded, and good enough for world No. 2. He has won the FIDE World Cup twice, plus the World Rapid and World Blitz Championships, and captained Armenia to Olympiad gold twice. Few players of his generation have stayed competitive at the top for as long.