Previously, in my past onboarding project where I brought in some chess players to the Hive blockchain and taught them the basics on getting started on Hive, Hive account@tenny-trigah was one of the players I onboarded. Due to a strong passion we both share for playing chess, I knew it would be a good idea to introduce him to the chess community on Hive.

I told him about the Liga chess battle that Hive account@stayoutoftherz brought here , and he played a couple of rounds. And I also informed him about the Saturday Hivechess tournament, where he played a couple of rounds as well, especially at the beginning of the tournament. He won the first round.

Designed in Figma and Image Source

Now, Tennyson is playing on the world stage at the 2025 FIDE Grand Swiss. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the tournament to give you a better understanding of how high-level this event is:

The FIDE Grand Swiss Tournament 2025 will be a chess tournament organized by FIDE, chess's international governing body, in September 2025. It forms part of the qualification cycle for the World Chess Championship 2026. It will be an 11-round Swiss-system tournament. The winner and runner-up of the tournament will earn the right to play in the Candidates Tournament 2026.[2] The Women’s section will be held in parallel at the same time and venue, and its top two finishers will qualify for the Women's Candidates Tournament.

Wikipedia

This goes to say it is definitely going to be tough for Tennyson, as the tournament is filled with A-list grandmasters who are looking for a shot at the World Chess Championship, and he is the player with the lowest rating, 2287.

Here is a snapshot of the top 10 players after round 2

Use the link below to view the full standings:
Standings

The event is fully packed with 116 players participating, and this tells you it is no joke. The first two rounds have not been good for Tennyson, first off losing the grandmaster Salem Saleh from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Salem is a pretty strong grandmaster with a rating of 2640 in classical chess. I watched a couple of his games on chess.com, where he fights other players with his 3000+ blitz rating.

Let's look at his game against our very own Tennyson.

Salem Saleh vs Olisa Tennyson

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Bb4+ 4. Nbd2 b6 5. a3 Bxd2+

The opening played is called the Bogo-Indian Defense: Grünfeld Variation. But to me it looks like the Nimzo-indian, but I guess since he responded differently with the setup of his knights on d2 and f3, that is why the opening is considered to be the Bogo-Indian Defense: Grünfeld Variation. I would say this opening would not be something new to Tennyson, since I have seen a couple of his games, and this is what he likes to play against d4. The Nimzo-indian setup of Nf6, e6, and Bb4.

After 11 moves, the game got to this position, and here is when Tennyson decided to go for the center break with e5. Not a bad idea, his pieces are developed now, and his king has castled to safety, so all that is left is to start creating play in the center of the board, which could later help to give the other pieces more space to control.

The game went further until Tennyson got into trouble after playing Rg8. The move immediately gave white a +3 advantage because the move that comes next is simple but very deadly if you fail to see the idea behind it. The move also set the prerequisite to win this game for the grandmaster.

Bg4!
On the surface, it looks like white has given out his bishop to the shackles of the black pawn on f5, but when you look closely, you will see there is more. If black goes ahead to capture that bishop with fxg4, he falls for fxe5, hitting the black queen with the white rook on f1, and then e6 comes next with a discovered attack on the black king, and it is game over.

Although Tennyson saw this idea and tried to avoid it but he could not hold it all off for so long. Two moves later in the game, it was all over.

Here is the link to the game if you would like to view it
Game Link

And here is the Game PGN:

[Event "FIDE Grand Swiss 2025"]
[Site "https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-grand-swiss-2025--open/round-1/xSCoiNg0/NIGYW1Tl"]
[Round "1.58"]
[White "Salem, A.R. Saleh"]
[Black "Olisa, Tennyson Ewomazino"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "2640"]
[WhiteTitle "GM"]
[WhiteFideId "9301348"]
[BlackElo "2287"]
[BlackFideId "8511390"]
[Variant "Standard"]
[ECO "E11"]
[Opening "Bogo-Indian Defense: Grünfeld Variation"]
[BroadcastName "FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 | Open"]
[BroadcastURL "https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-grand-swiss-2025--open/round-1/xSCoiNg0"]
[GameURL "https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-grand-swiss-2025--open/round-1/xSCoiNg0/NIGYW1Tl"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Bb4+ 4. Nbd2 b6 5. a3 Bxd2+ 6. Qxd2 Bb7 
7. e3 d6 8. Be2 a5 9. b3 Nbd7 10. Bb2 Qe7 11. Qc2 O-O 12. O-O e5 
13. Rad1 Rfe8 14. Rfe1 Ne4 15. d5 f5 16. Nd2 Nxd2 17. Qxd2 Rf8 
18. f4 Rae8 19. Bh5 g6 20. Bf3 g5 21. g3 Ba6 22. Qc2 Bb7 23. Re2 h6 
24. h3 Qf7 25. Rf1 gxf4 26. gxf4 Kh8 27. Rg2 Rg8 28. Bg4 Nf6 29. fxe5 1-0

Round 2

Olisa Tennyson vs Hovhannisyan Robert

In the second round of the tournament, Tennyson played against the 2629 grandmaster from Armenia, Hovhannisyan Robert. Losing his first game to Anish Giri from the Netherlands and Olisa Tennyson losing his first match as well to Salem Saleh, that is where the Swiss system got both of them paired.

1. c4 e5 2. Nc3 Bb4 3. Nd5 a5 4. Nxb4 axb4 5. Nf3 d6

The above position comes from the English Opening: King's English Variation, Kramnik-Shirov Counterattack, where there was an early capture on b4. White exchanges his knight for the bishop on b4. This time, with Tennyson playing with the white pieces, he did not hold back with his attack but instead went ahead with an attack on the king side, even after castling, then he played the move g4.

To me, I would say this is a bold move from Tennyson's end. Going for pawn expansion with the g-file pawn that was meant to be covering your king against a 2600+ rated grandmaster. That is huge.

Tennyson did not just stop there, as he continued further with his expansion on the kingside with his pawns, and at some point even brought in more pieces to join his king. But things got pretty bad for him when the black side got a counterattack on the queenside and used that opportunity to launch an attack on Tennyson's king.

From here, it is a checkmate in 13 moves as white cannot stop the series of moves that would come next, starting with Ne4+.

Here is the link to the game if you would like to view it
Game Link

And here is the Game PGN:

[Event "FIDE Grand Swiss 2025"]
[Site "https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-grand-swiss-2025--open/round-2/UnZivDF9/1w5vy8yn"]
[Round "2.58"]
[White "Olisa, Tennyson Ewomazino"]
[Black "Hovhannisyan, Robert"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "2287"]
[WhiteFideId "8511390"]
[BlackElo "2629"]
[BlackTitle "GM"]
[BlackFideId "13302507"]
[Variant "Standard"]
[ECO "A21"]
[Opening "English Opening: King's English Variation, Kramnik-Shirov Counterattack"]
[BroadcastName "FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 | Open"]
[BroadcastURL "https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-grand-swiss-2025--open/round-2/UnZivDF9"]
[GameURL "https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-grand-swiss-2025--open/round-2/UnZivDF9/1w5vy8yn"]

1. c4 e5 2. Nc3 Bb4 3. Nd5 a5 4. Nxb4 axb4 5. Nf3 d6 6. d4 e4 7. Ng5 Nf6 
8. g3 Bf5 9. Bg2 O-O 10. O-O h6 11. Nh3 Re8 12. Nf4 c6 13. f3 Na6 14. g4 Bh7 
15. b3 d5 16. h4 Nc7 17. g5 exf3 18. exf3 Nd7 19. cxd5 Nxd5 20. Nxd5 cxd5 
21. f4 Be4 22. f5 Ra6 23. Bh3 Qc7 24. Bf4 Qc3 25. Kh2 Bd3 26. Rf3 Qxd4 
27. Kg3 Nc5 28. Rc1 Rxa2 29. Bg4 Ne4+ 30. Kh3 Nf2+ 31. Rxf2 Qxf2 
32. Qf3 Re3 0-1

Also, if you would like to watch more games from Tennyson or any of the remaining participants, you can use this Lichess link to stay updated:

Watch the 2025 FIDE Grand Swiss

---

♟♟♟♟♟♟♟♟♟

Thanks For Reading!