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.
GM Oleksandr Bortnyk needed only nine points to win Freestyle Friday outright on May 15, good enough for his eighth Freestyle Friday victory, which tied GM Hikaru Nakamura for the most all time. GM Frederik Svane finished in sole second place on 8...
The $10,000 weekly prize fund isn't quite here yet in Titled Tuesday, but participation was up significantly on May 12, to 436 players after last week's 343 participants. GM Ian Nepomniachtchi won a dramatic tournament on tiebreaks ahead of GM Jef...
GM Vincent Keymer won Freestyle Friday on May 8 by a full point, scoring 9.5/11 ahead of IM Marco Materia and GM Pranav Venkatesh. Keymer only scored 0.5/2 against Materia and Pranav individually, but won every other game to become the first playe...
For most players, a six-month wait between Titled Tuesday victories would not be remarkable; hundreds play every single week, yet only a few dozen players have even won twice ever. But for all-time victories leader GM Hikaru Nakamura, months betwe...
GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda won Freestyle Friday in a comeback on May 1, winning in the final round to scratch out a win on tiebreaks over GM Jose Martinez. The feat marks the second time Duda has won both Titled Tuesday and Freestyle Friday in the...
Chess.com Open runner-up GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda, who qualified for the 2026 Esports World Cup with the result, followed up by winning Titled Tuesday on April 28. Propelled by an 8/8 start, Duda would only score half a point in the next two rounds, ...
GM Nodirbek Yakubboev won his first Freestyle Friday on April 24, going undefeated to win outright with 10/11 points. The result nearly doubled his total in the Freestyle Friday Championship, moving him into fourth place on the leaderboard behind ...
GM Nihal Sarin won his second Titled Tuesday of the last six weeks on April 21, rejoining GM Sina Movahed atop the spring split standings. Whereas in his previous victory, Nihal led wire-to-wire, this week he lost in the third round. Nonetheless, ...
The 12-year-old IM Faustino Oro was victorious in Freestyle Friday on April 17, the only of the three co-leaders entering the final round to win his game. GM Pranav Venkatesh finished in second place after leapfrogging the other two, IM Sahib Sing...
GM Haik Martirosyan scored 10/11 to win his first-ever Titled Tuesday on April 14, starting out 9/9 and (after playing 267 moves to split his last two games) carrying that to his first ever win in the event. Last week's victor GM Sina Movahed scor...
GM Sina Movahed won his second Titled Tuesday of the spring split and third of his career on April 7, scoring 10/11 to win outright. Movahed also now leads the spring split standings. GM Alexey Sarana rode an 8/8 start to finish in sole second on ...
IM Renato Terry won the first Freestyle Friday of April by a full point, scoring 9.5/11. Even with the FIDE Candidates and the Grenke Chess Festival occurring at the same time, the Freestyle Friday Championship continued apace, and Terry moved int...
Three co-leaders, none of them playing each other, all made draws in the final round, but someone still had to win the Titled Tuesday tournament out of GMs Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Hans Niemann, and Parham Maghsoodloo. And that is the order tiebreaks p...
To win Titled Tuesday, 3 0 Thursday, or Freestyle Friday it usually takes at least 9.5 points out of 11. Occasionally, nine points suffices. But, for Freestyle Friday on March 27, it only took an 8.5/11 score for GM Vincent Keymer to win on tiebre...
GM Zhamsaran Tsydypov scored 9.5/11 to win his first Titled Tuesday ever on March 24, despite taking a draw in a dead-winning position the final round. GM Vladimir Fedoseev, the only player who could have caught him, blundered into checkmate again...
GM Benjamin Bok won Freestyle Friday on March 20, becoming the 25th different player to win the event. He also became the fifth different winner in the first five weeks of the Freestyle Friday Championship. Bok's 9.5 points out of 11 were enough t...
Titled Tuesday on March 17 was decided on the clock, as GM Nihal Sarin took home the victory with a final-round win over GM Nils Grandelius, with just 0.7 seconds remaining when Grandelius' time expired in a drawn rook ending. Nihal started 8/8 an...
GM Pranav Venkatesh won his first Freestyle Friday of the new Freestyle Friday Championship on March 13, taking it outright with 9.5/11, as four different players have now won the first four tournaments of the new stakes (qualification for the 202...
GM Sina Movahed, the 15-year-old Iranian grandmaster coming off of victory in the Under-16 ChessKid Youth Championship, became the first player to score 10.5 points in a Titled Tuesday in 2026 on March 10, going to wire-to-wire to win the tourname...
GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda scored 9.5 points and took his second-ever Freestyle Friday on March 6, after his first came more than a year ago. He finished ahead of GM Martyn Kravtsiv, IM Almas Rakhmatullaev, and GM Oleksandr Bortnyk, who finished second...
GM Javokhir Sindarov won Titled Tuesday on March 3 as the Spring Split, the third and final portion of the 2025-26 Titled Tuesday season, opened. Sindarov defeated GM Nihal Sarin in the final round and emerged as the victor on tiebreaks after co-l...
IM Renato Terry won Freestyle Friday on February 27, the second week of the Freestyle Friday Championship, with a 9.5/11 score. Last week's winner GM Oleksandr Bortnyk finished second on 8.5/11, giving him a commanding early lead on the Championsh...
GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won the February 24 edition of Titled Tuesday to wrap up the winter split with his second win of the month, becoming one of eight qualifiers into the Chess.com Open. Vachier-Lagrave won in the final round to reach 9.5 poi...
With brand-new stakes introduced by the announcement of the Freestyle Friday Championship, the victory that GM Oleksandr Bortnyk earned in the February 20 edition of Freestyle Friday gave him a jumpstart toward potentially playing in the 2027 FIDE...
GM Fabiano Caruana finished just ahead of GM Denis Lazavik to win Titled Tuesday on February 17, after Caruana defeated GM Wesley So in the final round but Lazavik only made a draw with GM Hikaru Nakamura (in a rematch of the 3rd Place Match in th...
