Vincent Keymer

The only player to beat both Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana to a Grand Slam title in 2025 — at Weissenhaus, ahead of both of them.

By Carl Brodsky

In Chess960

Keymer won the Weissenhaus leg of the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, finishing ahead of Caruana in second and Carlsen in third — his one individual event win of the season. In 2026 he reached the semifinal of the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship, where Caruana beat him 3-1; the deciding game eight, which Keymer needed to win to force a tiebreak, went the other way instead, ending his run.

Outside Chess960

Keymer, born in Mainz, Germany in 2004, became the youngest German grandmaster ever at 14. He first drew attention at 13, winning the 2018 Grenke Open outright ahead of 49 grandmasters with the highest performance rating ever recorded by a player under 14. He crossed a 2700 rating in 2022, the same year he finished runner-up to Carlsen at the World Rapid Championship, and by 2025 had added the German Championship and the Chennai Grand Masters to his record — a top-ten player in the world still in his early twenties.