Awatramani, Chiu Dominate Bughouse Championship

NMs Isaac Chiu and Janak Awatramani dominated the 2025 Chess.com Community Bughouse Championship, although they didn’t have the highest FIDE ratings in the field. They won two matches decisively against the second-place team of FM Richard Zheng and IM Mark Plotkin. Surprisingly, last year’s champions, GMs Awonder Liang and Jeffery Xiong failed to reach the Grand Final, losing two matches to Zheng and Plotkin along the way.

The 2|0 bullet time control led the commentators and chat to refer to the event as “Buglett” and resulted in even more wild play than normal in Bughouse.

Bracket

Winners Quarterfinals

In the first round, the favorites showed their class. The defending champions, Liang and Xiong, dominated against Michael Shinder and FM Eilia Zomorrodian 10-2. The grandmasters both scored some nice minor-piece checkmates. 

Chiu and Awatramani dispatched IM Ben Li and FM Daniel Yeager by a score of 11-2. A second all-GM team of Guillermo Vazquez and Lars Oskar Hauge scored an impressive 8-2 victory over FM Roee Aroesti and NM Jalen Wang. Zheng and Plotkin scored a strong victory over Bartlomiej Zdybowicz and FM Wojciech Reza 8-2. 

Winners Semifinal

Plotkin and Zheng scored the first upset of the day in the second round, taking down the defending champions by a score of 7-4. Liang and Xiong never lost a match last year, so few would have predicted such a decisive defeat in just the second round of the event.

Meanwhile, the partners who came in second last year, Chiu and Hauge, took on each other’s teams. Chiu and Awatramani advanced by a lopsided score of 13-2!

Winners Final

Plotkin and Zheng’s reward for defeating the defending champions was a matchup in the Winners Final with Chiu and Awatramani. Their celebration didn’t last for long as the team of NMs scored a stunning 9-2 victory. This brought Chiu and Awatramani to the Grand Final, where they would await the winner of the Losers Bracket.

Losers Bracket

In the Losers Bracket, any loss meant elimination. Liang and Xiong were nearly knocked out by Li and Yeager. It was a back-and-forth struggle, but the defending champions survived 9-7 in overtime to earn a match against the other all-GM team, Vazquez and Hauge. That match also saw overtime as Vazquez and Hauge won the final two games of regulation and the first game of overtime to tie the score at 5-5. The match was hard-fought, but Liang and Xiong showed their resiliency again and won in overtime by a score of 8-7.

The win brought Liang and Xiong a rematch in the Losers Final with Plotkin and Zheng. GM Yasser Seirawan said that he was expecting the grandmasters to return to form, but Plotkin and Zheng defeated them for the second time in the event by a very convincing score of 8-3. 

Grand Final

Plotkin and Zheng had a tough task, trying to defeat the previously unbeaten Awatramani and Chiu. They gave their strong opponents their toughest match of the day, but it was still a comfortable win for the NMs, 13.4-5.5.  Awatramani and Chiu took the title with an overall score for the event of 47.5-11.5, a truly dominant showing!

In retrospect, the decisive victory for Awatramani and Chiu is hardly surprising. At one point during the event, they were the two highest-rated players in Bughouse on the Chess.com leaderboard! Amazingly, Awatramani is the highest-rated player by nearly 300 points with an astounding rating of 3001!