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 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...
GM Haik Martirosyan scored 10.5 points in Freestyle Friday on February 13, the most of anyone since last July. In the process, Martirosyan won the tournament—his first win ever in this event—by two whole points. IM Reza Mahdavi, GM Ale...
Already a candidate for the World Championship, GM Javokhir Sindarov took steps toward the 2026 Esports World Cup as well on February 10, winning Titled Tuesday with a 10/11 score. Coming in the largest field since September (455), it was his seco...
GM Vincent Keymer rode his 10th-round victory over GM Magnus Carlsen in Freestyle Friday to a win in the tournament on February 6. Both players scored nine points but Keymer's tiebreaks put him in the lead. Keymer previously won on May 2, 2025, an...
GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave took home Titled Tuesday on February 3, becoming the first player all year to score 10/11, allowing him to avoid tiebreaks to beat out GMs Arjun Erigaisi and Alexey Sarana on 9.5 points. The win was not only Vachier-...
GM Sina Movahed won his fifth Freestyle Friday on January 30, holding at least a share of the lead in every round of the tournament to join GMs Hikaru Nakamura, Oleksandr Bortnyk, Arjun Erigaisi, and Magnus Carlsen with five or more. Carlsen finis...
Queen of Chess, the Netflix documentary directed by Rory Kennedy about GM Judit Polgar's rise from child prodigy to one of the world's top players—woman or man—debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, ahead of its official ...
GM Dmitry Andreikin won a wild Titled Tuesday outright on January 27 with a score of 9.5/11. Andreikin, who wasn't in the picture atop the standings for much of the tournament, worked his way up and then became the only one of six players who ente...
GM Pranav Venkatesh is now a Freestyle Friday victor, taking his first tournament on January 23 with a 9.5/11 score. Coming in second place was GM Martin Kravtsiv, followed by GM Nodirbek Yakkuboev in third and GM Shamsiddin Vokhidov in fourth, wh...
GM Magnus Carlsen needed a few rounds to get himself going in Titled Tuesday on January 20, but still ended up scoring 9.5/11 and winning the tournament outright. He has now won two of the three Titled Tuesdays of 2026 so far and his fourth of the...
