GM Hikaru Nakamura won $45,000 in the inaugural 2025 Comet Open, an event that concluded on Sunday, October 19. He didn’t lose a single one of his six matches, finally defeating GM Denis Lazavik 2.5-1.5 in the Grand Final. He earns $45,000, while runner-up Lazavik makes $30,000 and GM Dmitry Andreikin $20,000 for third place.
There is an untitled tournament as well, and you can see the games and results on our dedicated Events page.
The Comet Open is a new online tournament that was open to all players as long as they played using the Comet browser. There were two tournaments that occurred simultaneously, one for titled players and another for untitled ones. In this report, we will focus only on the titled event, which attracted many of the world’s best players. You can see the prize distribution below.
Last week, thirty-two players qualified for the double-elimination Knockout that went from October 18-19, including top GMs Hikaru Nakamura, Arjun Erigaisi, Vincent Keymer, and Alireza Firouzja. Each match was best-of-four with a time control of 3+0.
By the end of Saturday, there were just eight players left in the Quarterfinals: Nakamura, GM Nihal Sarin, GM Dmitry Andreikin, Firouzja, Arjun, GM Javokhir Sindarov, GM Daniil Dubov, and GM Denis Lazavik. Nakamura won without a single match loss, though it wasn’t smooth sailing by any means. You can watch his video below or continue reading for our highlights.
Nakamura’s closest matches were against GM Parham Maghsoodloo, in the Winners Quarterfinals, and against Nihal, in the Winners Semifinals. Both matches went to a bidding armageddon tiebreak after ending in 2-2 equal scores, and Nakamura won both of them.
Against Maghsoodloo, the temporary piece sacrifice 18…Ncxe4! was a clever way to take advantage of the mistake on the previous move. There’s a reason GM Ben Finegold says, “Never play f3!”
While we saw two draws in the match against Maghsoodloo, all five games were decisive in Nakamura vs. Nihal. Nakamura lost the first game when Nihal found a cunning piece sacrifice, exploiting the pin on the e-file.
Nakamura then won twice in a row. First it was when Nihal sacrificed an exchange but didn’t get enough, and then it was with a mating attack that Nihal allowed when under 30 seconds.
Nihal then won on demand in 27 moves, with a kingside attack in an Italian Opening, to reach armageddon tiebreaks. In that final armageddon game, Nakamura blundered a knight, but managed to still win on demand by pressuring his opponent’s clock and king.
Nakamura went on to defeat Andreikin 3-1 in the Final and Lazavik 2.5-1.5 in the Grand Final. Lazavik lost game one by blundering a rook—though he was likely going to lose on time in the scramble anyway—and never managed to recover, with Nakamura securing three draws to win the match.
That concludes the Comet Open and congratulations to all the prize winners!
How to review?
The Comet Open, played on Chess.com, is an online prize tournament open to all players using Perplexity’s Comet browser. There are eight qualifiers on October 11 and 12, and 32 players qualify for the Titled Knockout that runs from October 18-19, with a separate event for untitled players. The prize fund is $200,000.
