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The Grand Prix Finale 2025 took place in the China Cultural Center of Stockholm on January 8-11th. The top 16 players fought for the win and, after many dramatic turns of events, the winner is Damen Woo 6d from UK, showcasing a very high level of play and defeating the favourites. Congratulations!
The Grand Prix Finale 2025, cloturing the Grand Prix Circuit of 2025 (12 tournaments to qualify to the Final Stage) took place in the China Cultural Center of Stockholm, Sweden, on January 8-11th.
The top 16 players fought for the win, first in a pool stage, then in a knock-out phase.
Despite some technical issues, with certain players being unable to join due to a snow storm or sneaky winter virus, the real drama happened in the games.
Before diving into crazy variations of what happened, let’s go straight to the outcome. We had more than enough suspense in the games already!
The winner is Damen Woo 6d from UK, who demonstrated a very high level of play and defeated the favorites. Congratulations!
The final standings:
π₯π¬π§ Damen Woo 6d
π₯π¨πΏ Lukáš PodpΔra 7d
π₯πΊπ¦ Vsevolod Ovsiienko 6d
4th πΊπ¦ Andrii Kravets 2p
5th π΅π± Mateusz Surma 3p
6th ππΊ Dominik BΕvíz 6d
7th π«π· Benjamin Dréan-Guénaïzia 1p
8th π«π· Lucas Neirynck 6d
All games and results: https://www.eurogofed.org/GP2025/gp_pairings.html 
This is first major big win for Damen Woo, and a well deserved victory.
As a matter of fact, Damen was on the edge of being eliminated at the group stage or at best involved in tie breakers, it could all have been so different if Charlie Akerblom 5d (Sweden) hadn’t made a yose blunder.
From that moment, Damen became invincible, passed the group stage, defeated Mateusz Surma 3p in quarterfinals, Andrii Kravets 2p in semi, and finally Lukas Podpera 7d in a totally crazy game. Bravo!
In the small final, two players from Ukraine had to play each other again (all the final games were a rematch from the pool stage!): Vsevolod Ovsiienko 6d, a young improving player, was challenging Andrii Kravets 2p. In the pool stage, Vsevolod had the upper hand and let the victory slip away. The game was a battle of nerves, with some mistakes here and there. The final mistake was a yose move by Andrii, leaving a chance to Vsevolod to come back and win by a tiny margin.
The group stage went rather “smoothly” for the favourites, but then, the next stage…
The games were broadcast (four boards) on OGS, IGS and gogameslive.eu, and live commented on Twitch by great pairs of commentators: Elian Ioan Grigoriu 6d and Lukas Krämer 6d, Ting Li 1p, Ali Jabarin 3p and Valerii Krushelnytskyi 7d.
And all info about the players, pairings, results here: https://www.eurogofed.org/GP2025/gp_index.html
Finally, we must first thank the China Cultural Center of Stockholm, which hosted the tournament in a beautiful location and rooms and took care of the players. Thanks to Charlie Akerblom as well for coordinating this event there.
Thanks to Martin Stiassny (Tournament Director) and Damir Medak (EGF Vice-President) for the logistics and updates from there.
See you next year in Vienna, most likely later in January, and in the meantime…go and collect some bonus points!! π