Nakamura Reclaims Arena Kings Season 9 Throne In Week 6

GM Hikaru Nakamura won the sixth week of Arena Kings on Wednesday, just moments before beginning a quarterfinal match in the Bullet Chess Championship. He defeated GM Oleksandr Bortnyk in the Arena Kings final. 

This week's semifinalists were GMs Zviad Izoria and Alan Pichot. 1455 players, including 67 streamers, participated in Arena Kings this week. 

The two-hour arena produced its usual 16 knockout participants from among the top streamers of any rating. Both the arena and knockout are played at three minutes per side with no increment.

• Arena
• Knockout
• Standings, Results, Prizes

Arena

For the second straight week of Arena Kings, Nakamura led all players in the arena portion by a wide margin. He scored 24.5/26, only losing once and drawing once for a total of 91 arena points, 15 more than the next player. The next highest scoring titled streamer was Pichot with 64 points on 20/26.

The games were often interesting and some were slightly bizarre, like this endgame with Naka's rook against five pawns.

Eventual finalist Bortnyk also had his moments during the arena.

Knockout

The round of 16, with its mixture of grandmasters and untitled players, still saw a couple of under-2200 players advance to the quarterfinal, @SundramNaam2SunaHoga and @jack2212. Sundram was rewarded with a match against Nakamura that ended 2-0 while Jack fell in the quarterfinal to Izoria.

The highest-profile matchup of the quarterfinals came between Bortnyk and GM Aman Hambleton, who was the only player to defeat Nakamura during the arena. Here, however, Bortnyk won both games after Hambleton blundered a piece in an ending in their first game. The second game was a wild one where Bortnyk eventually induced a fatal mistake from Hambleton in a rook-and-knight vs. rook ending.

The semifinals weren't very close either: Nakamura beat Izoria 2-0 with Bortnyk taking a 2.5-0.5 victory over Pichot. In the first of these matches, Nakamura's queen and a boatload of pawns beat Izoria's rook, bishop, and knight.

With Nakamura's next event now imminent, Bortnyk sportingly agreed to five draws of two moves or less in order to resolve the match in a single 1+1 bullet game. Naka won it to finish the tournament.

Standings, Results, Prizes

Nakamura earned $500 for first place and Bortnyk $350 for second; the semifinalist prize of $200 went to Pichot and Izoria while the other four quarterfinalists took in the standard $100 each, and ninth place through 16th received $50 (pending confirmation of fair play). The full standings of the knockout field are below:

 Arena Kings Season 9 | Week 6 | Final Knockout Standings

Full arena standings here.

All prizes are published in the results report here. 

Arena Kings is a weekly tournament on Chess.com every Wednesday. A two-hour Arena is followed by a knockout with the top 16 streaming players from the arena. The start time is 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time/18:00 Central European.