Bullet Chess Championship Is Back With Nakamura Gunning For A Hat-Trick Of Wins

The Bullet Chess Championship has been reloaded, the safety is off, and it’s ready to fire! The year’s explosive action kicks off on May 24 with a star-studded posse of gunslingers and $100,000 in prizes at stake.

Chess.com’s Bullet Chess Championship is the undisputed top tournament for bullet chess. The winner is the discipline's de facto world champion and can rightly claim to be the fastest gun in chess.

It is also one of three major championship announcements Chess.com is making on Wednesday along with the new Hyperbullet Championship, part of the Community Championships series, and the 2024 Speed Chess Championship.

So who’s shooting for glory this year?

The event is a 16-player double-elimination bracket tournament with 12 players directly invited and four spots open for qualifiers. The invitees are all renowned speed chess players on Chess.com.

GM Hikaru Nakamura, the all-time leader in Bullet Brawl with 24 wins, returns to defend the title he’s won two years in a row and a record four times in total.

In Nakamura's way is his old foe GM Magnus Carlsen, Norway’s five-time world champion and one of the greatest speed chess players of all time.

Will it be a duel between Nakamura and Carlsen at High Noon again like last year? Not if the rest of the field has anything to do with it.

This man is streaming, dancing to music, and up 4 points vs the highest rated chess player in the world, all at the same time.@GMHikaru is INSANE 🤩 pic.twitter.com/IFe023wmJb

— Chess.com (@chesscom) July 21, 2023

Also shooting for the title are four of the most deadly in chess: GMs Alireza Firouzja, Nihal Sarin, Daniel Naroditsky, and Andrew Tang.

They are joined by GMs Anish Giri, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Jose Martinez, Tuan Minh Le, and Oleksandr Bortnyk. Over one minute, they are gunfighters of the highest order.

Before the main event on June 10, the final four spots will be decided at two play-ins open to all titled players held on May 24. The format for the play-ins will be bullet arenas followed by a double elimination bracket with the top two from each advancing into the last 16.

The live broadcast of the main event will be aired on Chess.com/TV and on our Twitch and YouTube channels, with expert commentary provided by Chess.com’s team.