GM Hikaru Nakamura won a dramatic Titled Tuesday on October 20, taking down GM Alireza Firouzja in the final round to win the event with 9.5/11. Nakamura also needed tiebreaks to beat out GMs Dmitry Andreikin and Sina Movahed, who finished in second and third, respectively, also on 9.5 points. Nakamura extended his lead in the 2026-27 CCT Standings with the victory, his first in Titled Tuesday since May.

Broadcast

In case you missed it, here's this week's broadcast with GM David Howell, filling in for GM Robert Hess:

Recap

Nakamura was also the last player on 100 percent, starting 7/7. If his seventh-round game to get there against GM Liem Le seemed familiar, that might be because they followed Nakamura's seventh-round game against GM Alexey Sarana from two weeks ago. Like Sarana, Le missed a drawing subtlety on move 16 of the opening, and Nakamura went on to win.

Coincidentally, it was Sarana who knocked Nakamura off his pedestal this week, winning their eighth-round matchup and pushing the perfect score bounty to $5,500 next week. Sarana went up an exchange in an endgame and was able to trade queens. Nakamura fought on but, with both players under a minute, eventually missed a pin that cost him his bishop.

GM Minh Le (not Liem from earlier) took the opportunity to join Sarana in first place, checkmating Andreikin in an endgame.

In the matchup between leaders coming out of the break, the position on the board stayed equal, which was more important than Le falling behind on the clock as their game ended in a draw. Two of the three boards below them—GM Maxim Matlakov vs. Movahed and Firouzja vs. IM Renato Terry—also saw draws. The lone exception was Nakamura's game against GM Haik Martirosyan, with Nakamura rejoining the lead after a victory.

Eight players were right behind Sarana, Le, and Nakamura on 7.5/9. It was Movahed who got the chance to play up, taking Black against Sarana while Minh Le and Nakamura fought. In that second game, a repetition presented itself on the board, with Nakamura deliberating before taking it.

Sarana had a chance to take the sole lead, and got a decent start out of the opening. But the tide turned in the middlegame, with the tactics getting difficult, Howell at one point commenting that, "Sometimes in chess you blunder, but you survive." In the end, however, Sarana did not survive, and Movahed went on to win.

Andreikin, Firouzja, and GM Parham Maghsoodloo also won in the 10th round, creating a six-way tie for first place with just one round remaining. "I'm going to be sad to hand the reins back to Robert after this, this has been so much fun," Howell remarked. Among the group, Movahed and Firouzja had fought their way back from a loss in one of the first two rounds (against FM Yaroslav Shevchenko and GM Alexandra Kosteniuk, respectively). 

The battlelines for the final round were drawn as Maghsoodloo vs. Andreikin, Movahed vs. Minh Le, and a marquee matchup between Nakamura and Firouzja. An intense game required a lot of effort from both players, with most of the game played in at least some time pressure, and then a lot of it. Firouzja was the one under more clock duress, and Howell finally made the call: "The clock goes red!... What an ending we just saw."

After the top three, Sarana, GM Vincent Keymer, and GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave tied for fourth place with nine points. Sarana's nice recovery against Martirosyan in the last round salvaged the official fourth place on tiebreaks. Minh Le, Firouzja, and Maghsoodloo all salvaged prizes and CCT points with seventh, eighth, and 10th place, respectively.

Final Standings

Prize Table

*Bounty grows by $250 per week without a perfect score, and resets once a perfect score has been achieved.

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