Niemann Celebrates Birthday With Freestyle Ticket To Las Vegas
GM Hans Niemann celebrated his birthday by winning two matches to qualify for the Las Vegas Freestyle Grand Slam next month. After winning two rounds yesterday, Niemann survived two more difficult matches against GMs Yu Yangyi and Denis Lazavik today to earn a spot in the tournament.
Knockout Bracket
The Play-In format features 16 players (12 invitees and four qualifiers) dueling their way through a single-elimination bracket in best-of-two, 15+3 Freestyle Chess matches. If the match score is 1-1 after two games, a two-game blitz tiebreaker, and finally a single armageddon game, were used to split the tie.
Lazavik 1.5-0.5 Fedoseev
Lazavik advanced out of two rounds of knockouts in yesterday's play-in tournament to reach the final four today. After so much work, he didn't let GM Vladimir Fedoseev stop him in the semifinals.
Needing a win in the second game, Fedoseev won a pawn and reached a much better rook endgame, but the saying that "all rook endgames are drawn" proved true once again, and Lazavik escaped with a 1.5-0.5 match victory.
Niemann 3-1 Yu
While the other semi-final was a quick win for Lazavik, Niemann vs. Yu was a slugfest. Yu dominated the first game, and seemed on his way to joining Lazavik in the final.
Denis Lazavik and Yu Yangyi win their games almost at the same time!#FreestyleChess pic.twitter.com/w7ozeGP2Km
— chess24 (@chess24com) June 20, 2025
In the next round, however, Niemann struck back quickly, using a pin to win a piece in the opening.
Niemann would go on to win both games of the blitz tiebreak, and with them, the match. He took his first lead with a clever tactic.
Niemann won the fourth game as well, reaching the finals with a 3-1 victory.
Niemann 2.5-2.5 Lazavik
After losing the first game of the semifinals, Niemann enjoyed a much better start to his final match. He built a strong attack with the black pieces. While Niemann wasn't able to convert cleanly, Lazavik's defensive effort cost him too much time on the clock. Niemann kept playing sharply and eventually reached an endgame with a queen against a rook and knight. An engine might have been able to find a fortress, but with seconds on the clock, the position was too much for Lazavik to hold.
Hans Niemann wins with Black and is one game away from a ticket to Las Vegas! #FreestyleChess pic.twitter.com/GYEPqKJE1Q
— chess24 (@chess24com) June 20, 2025
After the first game, Lazavik needed to strike back with the black pieces. Amazingly, it took him only a few minutes.
Lazavik's win sent the match to a blitz tiebreak, where things settled down somewhat. Both blitz games were drawn, leading to one final armageddon game to determine who would qualify for Las Vegas.
The players bid for times and Niemann received the black pieces and draw odds, but would only start the game with 3:55 on his clock, against his opponent's five minutes. As you might expect with limited time and a freestyle position, the game was messy, but Black was better most of the way and Hans showed excitement as he captured the last pawn to secure a draw and print his ticket to Vegas.
GM Rafael Leitao analyzes this critical game below.
Hans Niemann qualifies for #FreestyleChess Las Vegas, on his birthday! pic.twitter.com/k363BfBdIj
— chess24 (@chess24com) June 20, 2025
Niemann was ecstatic after the event: "It could not have been written any better. It feels like a script. Sometimes my life feels like a script. That's the only way that you can understand certain things that happen." He described his excitement to play a tournament in America, where he won't have to travel far. It will be his first tournament in Las Vegas in years, after having a some successful events there as a young player.
The $750,000 3rd leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam will be played in Las Vegas, Nevada on July 16th - 20th. Participants include GMs Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Arjun Erigaisi, Fabiano Caruana, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Wesley So, Levon Aronian, Leinier Dominguez and Parham Maghsoodloo. Six more competitors have yet to be announced and the final player will be determined by the winner of this week's knockout on Chess.com. All games are played in freestyle chess.
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NM Jeremy Kane is the Instructional Content Manager for Chess.com, and the author of several courses in the Starting Out series, Queen’s Gambit Accepted, Trompowsky, and Tarrasch.
