“Daddy Carlsen” Wins Third Titled Tuesday Of Season

GM Magnus Carlsen won Titled Tuesday on October 14, his third of the Autumn Split and first since the recent birth of his son, leading commentator GM David Howell to dub the champion “Daddy Carlsen.” Carlsen flirted with a perfect score after reaching 8/8, but settled for 10/11 in the end, more than enough to extend his lead in the Champions Chess Tour (CCT) standings.

Broadcast

If you missed the official Take Take Take broadcast with Kaja Snare, Howell, and PogChamps veteran/WFM Anna Cramling‘s partner Wirtual, you can catch it below!

CCT Standings

Recap

For a solid majority of the tournament, a perfect 11/11 score was in play, which no one has achieved since Carlsen this past April. This time, Carlsen dodged several bullets on his way to an 8/8 start, perhaps none so precarious as his fifth-round matchup against GM Liem Le (who also achieved 11/11 this year). 

Carlsen would not be the only player on a perfect score for another two rounds, when he defeated GM David Paravyan in the seventh round while GM Arjun Erigaisi took down GM Sina Movahed.

That led to the eighth-round battle between Carlsen on seven points and Arjun on 6.5 points, which turned into another close call for Magnus, who admitted after the game that “these games are some grinds.” Carlsen held a slim advantage on the board and was down on the clock, but the time pressure got to Arjun first, as he dropped his remaining pieces to end up in a hopeless situation.

Grind or not, Carlsen was now three games away from the perfect score entering the second break. Unfortunately for him, the opportunity didn’t last much longer coming out of the break. Although his ninth-round game against GM Salem Saleh looked for some time like it would be another great escape, Carlsen ended up erring under pressure and resigned one move before he would have been checkmated.

Carlsen got back on the wagon in round 10 against GM Dmitry Andreikin, while Saleh got lucky just to make a draw by repetition with GM Jeffery Xiong. As a result, Carlsen regained the outright lead in the tournament with one round remaining, being on nine points while Saleh, Paravyan, and GM Minh Le all had 8.5 points.

Carlsen’s game came against Le, and the tournament leader seemed perfectly okay with a draw, as the game steered into a simple-looking position. But those also remain the games that Carlsen has mastered, and he would go on to win the tournament after achieving the difficult feat of creating an overwhelming pawn-up, opposite-colored bishop endgame position.

Congratulations to @MagnusCarlsen who has, in his words, returned from the “wilderness” of fatherhood to win his third #TitledTuesday of the Autumn split!

Welcome back to the deep, dark forest! pic.twitter.com/OOVKvUnhaG

— chess24 (@chess24com) October 14, 2025

Paravyan had already faced Saleh back in the sixth round, so he played GM Ian Nepomniachtchi in the final round instead, while Saleh took on last week’s winner, GM Alireza Firouzja. Firouzja, who was on the back foot the whole tournament after suffering an upset in round two, defeated Saleh to move into fifth place ahead of Saleh’s sixth. Paravyan, meanwhile, defeated his fellow Russian and took outright second place as the only player on a 9.5/11 score.

Xiong, despite not converting against Saleh, finished in third place. Two Vietnamese IMs, Dau Khuong Duy in fourth place and Le Thao Nguyen Pham with the best women’s score, won the remaining prizes.

October 14 Titled Tuesday | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings.)