GM Denis Lazavik has booked his spot in the semifinals of the 2025 Speed Chess Championship and will play GM Magnus Carlsen live in London after defeating GM Hans Niemann 15.5-9.5 on Friday. Lazavik won 11 games and lost only five against Niemann, presenting himself as a serious threat to Carlsen’s campaign in the process.
The finals will take place in London on February 7-8, 2026, and will once again be a live, ticketed event.
2025 Speed Chess Championship Bracket
With the quarterfinals bracket complete, the semifinals pairings are now confirmed—Lazavik will take on Carlsen, while a showdown between speed chess titans, GMs Hikaru Nakamura and Alireza Firouzja, promises to be a spectacle.
Niemann 9.5-15.5 Lazavik
IMs Danny Rensch and Levy Rozman were both surprised by the pre-match prediction that Lazavik would come out on top. Both felt that Niemann would hold a lead after the blitz segments, due to his supposed superiority in the 3+1 time control.
However, the forecast that Lazavik would overcome Niemann, albeit by a small margin, was an acknowledgement of the speed chess prowess of Lazavik, especially considering the 124-point gap between he and Niemann in terms of FIDE classical ratings. On the Chess.com leaderboards, Lazavik is currently ranked sixth in blitz and 12th in bullet.
In the end, Lazavik exceeded expectations and dominated the match, winning each segment by one or more points. His 5.5-2.5 score in the 5+1 section was the most surprising, given Niemann’s 2734 FIDE blitz rating.
5+1: Niemann 2.5 – 5.5 Lazavik
Chances went awry for both players in the opening games of the 5+1 section, with nerves perhaps to blame. In the curtain-raiser, Niemann missed a chance to create a dangerous passed pawn with 35.a4! and instead locked up the position, allowing Lazavik to justify his Berlin Defense-derived pawn structure.
Minutes later, another chance for fell by the wayside after both players overlooked a discovered check in the endgame. Had Niemann found the winning moves in either game and rode the momentum, the match may have panned out differently.
Lazavik then missed a chance of his own in the fourth game, and as Rozman highlighted, his head shaking was indicative that he had immediately seen the correct move after making a sub-optimal one.
Once Lazavik shook off the nerves, he then put together one of the most spectacular patches of play of the 2025 Speed Chess Championship so far. The 19-year-old banked three consecutive wins against his super-GM opponent and put on an exhibition of practicality, resourcefulness, and multipurpose moves.
After four draws, Denis draws first blood by winning with the black pieces!https://t.co/FwKdQTM5Ob#SpeedChess pic.twitter.com/BibmKDI2vx
— chess24 (@chess24com) November 21, 2025
In his second win, Lazavik turned an innocuous English Opening into a crushing kingside attack, confirming victory on the 22nd move with a brutal rook sacrifice.
A draw to close out the 5+1 portion left Niemann with a three-point mountain to climb and plenty of questions to answer.
3+1: Niemann 3.5-4.5 Lazavik
The 3+1 segment was a tale of two halves, with five decisive games following four draws. The latter of these games was a 122-game marathon, and was arguably the game of the match. This game culminated in a rook and bishop vs. rook ending which Niemann defended using only his increment. It was a fitting choice for the Game of the Day and analysis by GM Dejan Bojkov will be added shortly.
Soon after, Niemann scored his first full point of the match after outplaying Lazavik from the black side of English Opening: Four Knights, Kingside Fianchetto Line. Despite Lazavik’s last ditch attempt to save the game with a renegade rook, Niemann came out on top.
Lazavik riposted resiliently and scored 3/4 to close out the 3+1 section, capitalizing on Niemann’s dipping level as a semifinals berth slipped from his grasp and showing why his name and the word clutch are so often used in the same sentence.
In the final 3+1 game, Lazavik scored a full point after trapping Niemann’s clumsily placed bishops on the kingside with 29.h4!. Niemann’s early resignation confirmed a 10-6 score. Notably, Lazavik scored 4.5-3.5 in what was considered to be Niemann’s best time control.
1+1: Niemann 3.5-5.5 Lazavik
Oozing with quiet confidence, Lazavik continued to heap woe on Niemann in the bullet section and extended his lead by a further two points. There were moments where the beginnings of a comeback seemed to be on the cards, however Niemann was not his usual, uncompromising self when opportunities arose.
A trio of wins for Lazavik in the last 10 minutes sealed a comprehensive performance and his final win, which was an 18-move win on the white side of the Grunfeld Defense, summed up the match aptly.
A consolation win for Niemann left him just shy of double digits, with Lazavik finishing six points in front. Following the contest Rozman praised the victor, stating: “He had like two bad moments in three and a half hours.”
During the post-match interview, Lazavik humbly admitted the following about his opponent: “Even after the match I think I’m not stronger than he is, for sure, but, somehow, he played not great today.”
He then gave away one of the secret ingredients to his success… good opening preparation. “I usually play first 1.e5 but I prepared 1.c5 and I had a couple of good games in this Nh6 variation and also second e6.”
Carlsen will no doubt be taking notes since his last over the board result against Lazavik was a loss at the 2024 FIDE World Rapid Championships. Time will tell whether the 19-year-old upstart can knock over the world champion in their upcoming match.
The Speed Chess Championship, which starts on October 12 and culminates with Live Finals on February 8, 2026 in London, is Chess.com’s most important speed chess event. Some of the biggest names in chess compete to determine the best speed chess player in the world. The games are played with time controls of 5+1, 3+1, and 1+1. The prize fund is $250,000.
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