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Titled Tuesday Professional Look : Sarin's win

Titled Tuesday Professional Look : Sarin's win

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Lets talk Titled Tuesday.

This is a highly competitive blitz tournament occuring every week. 11 rounds, 5 minutes per player with no increment, only open to Titled Players. I have played it several times, it is a tough tournament.

Who was the winner of the most recent Tuesday in April (April 21) ? @nihalsarin

https://www.chess.com/players/nihal-sarin



What was the final ranking for top participants ?

a strong field.

You can read the "official" report here from chess.com

https://www.chess.com/news/view/nihal-wins-titled-tuesday-april-21-2026

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But what if you want to go deeper and analyze the games and the action from a "professional" standpoint ? i.e from a titled player like myself competing against these super strong GMs. trying to learn from the best players and focusing on the key moments and key games/openings.

This is the aim of this post.

so lets analyze Nihal's performance in more details

We can't see its a tough tournament because his performance 9.5/11 allowed him to win the tournament but was less convincing than his rating at the beginning of the tournament. He performed at 3205 rating vs starting rating of 3318. 

94.1 accuracy is impressive for blitz over 11 games with strong opponents!

This standing table is more detailed (please click right and open to see all columns and metrics calculated) . I like to break down games by 4 main styles.

you can find more details about this classification here -> https://www.chess.com/blog/thechesscorner64/game-review-4-types-of-games

Nihal managed to dominate several games, here's the scorecard for his tournament including his favorite openings.

Now that we have the metrics, we can dive into Nihal's chess. but instead of replaying all his games, we can focus on the type of game and the key moments.

We can see that Nihal with Black was a bit worse but not lost; Then the game was about equal but suddenly the eval turns negative, i.e to black's advantage.

its important to understand these key moments in the game.

POSITION BLACK TO PLAY given as a quiz

of course you can replay the entire game here
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Now lets see another critical moment against Galchenko

WHITE TO PLAY (given as a quiz) 

once again, Nihal is extremely strong in calculating variations and spotting tactics
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you can see the evaluation of this game from move 1 til the end. It wasn't a smooth domination but a "full fight" or a topsy-turvy contest.
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While the final tactics were executed flawlessly, Black has the advantage from move 22 to 28.
This type of analysis is bit more detailed than 'game analysis" in chess.com
a very important game for the tournament was GM Nihal Sarin playing GM Hans Niemann. @HansonTwitch
Here's the full game replay
the game was a true fight between these two fierce competitors.
So the critical moment was when Hans made a blunder and Nihal took the driver seat for the last time. You can see from the evaluation that at best the position was equal, Hans Niemann was never in a position to take the edge, and he maintained equality for the opening moves and then for a short period.
31..f5 was a bad move by Hans. can you find the killer blow Nihal Sarin played as White ?
White to play
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The answer is
...
..
Nihal played the only winning move which was 32 Bd3!
White threatens to bring his rook to the b file and called black's pawn on b2.
in the game Black tried to exchange on d6, but 1) this gives White a strong passed pawn 2) Black's bishop is out of play
you can replay the rest of the game, which showed Sarin's domination and good technique from this point on.
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I hope that you learnt a bit from this granular and analytical review of titled tuesday.