Nakamura Wins First Titled Tuesday Since August, Still Way Ahead In Titled Cup

NathanielGreen

Oct 16, 2024, 9:26 AM | 8 | Chess Event Coverage

GM Hikaru Nakamura returned to the top of the Titled Tuesday standings on October 15, winning the late event with 9.5 points after finishing third in the early event, which was won by GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda with 10 points. Duda won outright, while Nakamura won on tiebreaks over GMs Oleksandr Bortnyk and Magnus Carlsen.

The win was Duda's fifth of 2024, third-most of the year behind Nakamura and Carlsen. For Nakamura, he won his 78th Titled Tuesday since October 2020 and his 17th of the year, but his first since August 6.

Early Tournament (Duda, 10/11)
Late Tournament (Nakamura, 9.5/11)
Titled Cup Standings

Early Tournament

In a rarity, two players made it through eight rounds on a perfect score out of the 725 players from the early tournament. Duda was not one of them after making draws in rounds four and six. Instead, GM Pranesh M defeated Bortnyk to become the last perfect player on 9/9.

Pranesh's reward was to be matched with Nakamura in the 10th round. Nakamura's ensuing victory threw the tournament standings into chaos as there was suddenly a five-way tie for first on 9/10.

Among the five, Duda would be matched with Pranesh, Nakamura with GM Alexey Sarana, and GM Dmitry Andreikin would face an opponent on 8.5 points, GM Mamikon Gharibyan.

Only Duda won his game, which cleared up the situation for first place. In a bit of symmetry, Duda with White checkmated Pranesh on g7 with the queen in 41 moves... which is exactly what Pranesh had done to Bortnyk in the ninth round.

Sarana was able to secure second place with his draw against Nakamura, although pulling out a win would have won the event with his tiebreak score. Meanwhile, despite losing his last two games, Pranesh was able to stay in the top five.

October 15 Titled Tuesday | Early | Final Standings (Top 20)

Number	Rk	Fed	Title	Username	Name	Rating	Score	Tiebreak 1
1	10		GM	@Polish_fighter3000	Jan-Krzysztof Duda	3083	10	73
2	9		GM	@mishanick	Aleksei Sarana	3096	9.5	81
3	1		GM	@Hikaru	Hikaru Nakamura	3263	9.5	71
4	7		GM	@FairChess_on_YouTube	Dmitry Andreikin	3088	9.5	66.5
5	6		GM	@artooon	Pranesh M	3125	9	77.5
6	8		GM	@Oleksandr_Bortnyk	Oleksandr Bortnyk	3084	9	74.5
7	47		GM	@Zhigalko_Sergei	Sergei Zhigalko	2924	9	67.5
8	27		GM	@rasmussvane	Rasmus Svane	2964	9	67
9	37		GM	@Gareth-Bale11	Mamikon Gharibyan	2944	9	67
10	167		GM	@js20000	Jan Subelj	2769	9	66.5
11	198		IM	@Ranindu2003	Ranindu Dilshan Liyanage	2735	9	66.5
12	64		GM	@francyIM	Francesco Sonis	2900	8.5	76
13	5		GM	@Msb2	Matthias Bluebaum	3120	8.5	74
14	55		GM	@WanderingKnightLY	Yan Liu	2917	8.5	73.5
15	52		GM	@moro182	Luca Moroni Jr	2931	8.5	72
16	19		GM	@Beca95	Aleksandar Indjic	2989	8.5	67
17	11		GM	@wonderfultime	Tuan Minh Le	3050	8.5	67
18	42		GM	@FXDon77	Xu Yi	2927	8.5	64
19	38		GM	@Sychev_on_YouTube	Klementy Sychev	2933	8.5	61.5
20	2		GM	@nihalsarin	Nihal Sarin	3188	8	80
111	143		GM	@Goryachkina	Aleksandra Goryachkina	2728	6.5	65.5

(Full final standings here.)

Duda won the first place prize of $1,000. Sarana won $750, Nakamura $350, and Andreikin in fourth won $200. The $100 prizes went to Pranesh and GM Aleksandra Goryachkina.

Late Tournament

In the field of 485, Nakamura went undefeated, as Duda had earlier, but with an extra draw. Unlike the earlier tournament, however, no one made it through six rounds perfectly, let alone two players reaching 8/8. Instead, all seven players to start 5/5 drew or lost in round six.

The situation never really cleared up; after no round did any player hold the outright lead. The only times when the share of it was down to two players involved Nakamura, who drew GM Nihal Sarin in round eight and Carlsen in round 11. It wasn't for a lack of effort on either side of the Nakamura–Carlsen contest, which lasted nearly 100 moves—oddly, ending only after a position that first appeared on move 77 repeated on moves 95 and 97.

The stage was set for that potentially decisive matchup the round before when Nakamura beat Duda, and Carlsen beat Nihal. The first of those 10th-round games to end was Carlsen–Nihal, a 34-move affair that turned on the seemingly obvious 16...Nxg3.

Tactics and intermezzos flashed even earlier in Nakamura–Duda, but this one got to an endgame, where Nakamura eventually ended Duda's hopes to win both of the day's events.

And while those victories would guarantee Carlsen and Nakamura a share of first place, Bortnyk defeated Sarana in the final round, which allowed him to leapfrog Carlsen in the tiebreaks, but not Nakamura. The game appeared to be going Sarana's way until near the very end.

October 15 Titled Tuesday | Late | Final Standings (Top 20)

Number	Rk	Fed	Title	Username	Name	Rating	Score	Tiebreak 1
1	2		GM	@Hikaru	Hikaru Nakamura	3291	9.5	81.5
2	10		GM	@Oleksandr_Bortnyk	Oleksandr Bortnyk	3119	9.5	77.5
3	1		GM	@MagnusCarlsen	Magnus Carlsen	3308	9.5	70.5
4	5		GM	@Msb2	Matthias Bluebaum	3127	9	73.5
5	15		GM	@SpeedofLight0	Andrew Hong	3050	9	72.5
6	14		GM	@dropstoneDP	David Paravyan	3045	9	66
7	7		GM	@mishanick	Aleksei Sarana	3108	8.5	82
8	3		GM	@nihalsarin	Nihal Sarin	3190	8.5	80.5
9	6		GM	@DanielNaroditsky	Daniel Naroditsky	3152	8.5	80
10	16		GM	@Jospem	Jose Martinez	3020	8.5	68
11	11		GM	@Polish_fighter3000	Jan-Krzysztof Duda	3093	8.5	67.5
12	136		IM	@Stalri	Richard Stalmach	2672	8.5	62.5
13	85		FM	@NikitaShandrygin	Nikita Shandrygin	2774	8.5	59
14	8		GM	@FairChess_on_YouTube	Dmitry Andreikin	3087	8	75
15	13		GM	@Andreikka	Andrey Esipenko	3063	8	74.5
16	33		IM	@MatthewG-p4p	Matvey Galchenko	2922	8	69.5
17	12		GM	@OparinGrigoriy	Grigoriy Oparin	3069	8	69
18	67		GM	@Cayse	Martyn Kravtsiv	2832	8	67
19	35		CM	@stollenmonster	Egor Baskakov	2922	8	65
20	21		GM	@DrVelja	Velimir Ivic	2972	8	64.5
82	126		FM	@anasta10	Anastasia Avramidou	2614	6.5	50

(Full final standings here.)

Nakamura won the $1,000 grand prize for a total of $1,350 on the day. Bortnyk, who just missed a paying position earlier in the day, now took home $750. Carlsen won $350 in third, GM Matthias Bluebaum $200 in fourth, and GM Andrew Hong $100 in fifth. FM Anastasia Avramidou won the $100 women's prize for the second straight late tournament.

Titled Cup Standings

With 11 weeks and 22 tournaments left, time is running out to dislodge the Titled Cup leaders. In the main standings, Carlsen did gain half a point on Nakamura this week but needs to do that every week from here on out just to tie.

Open

#	Username	Score	Player
1	@Hikaru	198.5	GM Hikaru Nakamura
2	@MagnusCarlsen	193.0	GM Magnus Carlsen
3	@Jospem	187.0	GM Jose Martinez
4-t	@jefferyx	186.5	GM Jeffery Xiong
5-t	@mishanick	186.5	GM Alexey Sarana

Women

#	Username	Score	Player
1	@Goryachkina	143.5	GM Aleksandra Goryachkina
2	@Flawless_Fighter	142.0	IM Polina Shuvalova
3	@ChessQueen	141.0	GM Alexandra Kosteniuk
4-t	@Meri-Arabidze	138.5	IM Meri Arabidze
4-t	@annasargsyan_m	138.5	IM Anna M. Sargsyan

Other Category Leaders

Juniors: GM Denis Lazavik (184.0 points)

Seniors: GM Gata Kamsky (170.5 points)

Girls: WCM Veronika Shubenkova (120.5 points)

The Titled Cup fantasy game Chess Prophet continues as well. Current standings can be found here. (Login required.)

Titled Tuesday is Chess.com's weekly tournament for titled players, with two tournaments held each Tuesday. The first tournament begins at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time/17:00 Central European/20:30 Indian Standard Time, and the second at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time/23:00 Central European/2:30 Indian Standard Time (next day).

Nathaniel Green

Nathaniel Green is a staff writer for Chess.com who writes articles, player biographies, Titled Tuesday reports, video scripts, and more. He has been playing chess for about 30 years and resides near Washington, DC, USA.