GM Vladislav Artemiev has taken home the first Freestyle Friday of August, the fourth straight week where someone won the event for the first time. The tournament still in the balance with a round left to go, Artemiev defeated GM Sam Sevian to win his eighth straight game to conclude the event with a score of 10/11, coming out ahead of the field of 168.
In a somewhat amusing position where castling will never move a rook, White’s knights eventually took up dominating positions on the queenside and won an exchange out of it.
Sevian was still able to finish in the paid position of fourth place, ahead of GM Jeffery Xiong after winning their 10th-round matchup. Don’t miss the sequence on moves 16-20.
Ahead of both of them were GMs Alexey Sarana and Matthias Bluebaum. It was also Sarana who ended the day’s longest perfect start, which had belonged to GM Amin Tabatabaei on 7/7. Amusingly, neither player moved a piece until move five, just pawns. The game was ultimately decided when Tabatabaei missed Sarana’s one-move retreat into a rook fork.
In standard chess, you will pretty much never see the computer favor Black after just two moves between grandmasters, but that’s exactly what happened to GM Haowen Xue in the game where Bluebaum clinched third place, as Bluebaum never let his advantage go after that.
The race to the women’s prize was close, with IM Meri Arabidze finishing one spot ahead of WGM Anna Shukhman in the standings. Arabidze’s 10th-round win over GM Sergei Iskusnyh was key.
August 1 Freestyle Friday | Final Standings (Top 25)
| Rank | Seed | Fed | Title | Username | Name | Rating | Score | 1st Tiebreak |
| 1 | 34 | GM | @Sibelephant | Vladislav Artemiev | 2590 | 10 | 64.5 | |
| 2 | 9 | GM | @mishanick | Aleksei Sarana | 2727 | 9 | 66 | |
| 3 | 11 | GM | @Msb2 | Matthias Bluebaum | 2714 | 9 | 65.5 | |
| 4 | 7 | GM | @Konavets | Sam Sevian | 2742 | 8.5 | 70 | |
| 5 | 3 | GM | @jefferyx | Jeffery Xiong | 2778 | 8 | 72 | |
| 6 | 19 | GM | @Oleksandr_Bortnyk | Oleksandr Bortnyk | 2661 | 8 | 69.5 | |
| 7 | 14 | GM | @BogdanDeac | Bogdan Daniel Deac | 2676 | 8 | 66.5 | |
| 8 | 8 | GM | @vi_pranav | Pranav V | 2715 | 8 | 64.5 | |
| 9 | 16 | GM | @wonderfultime | Tuan Minh Le | 2655 | 8 | 63 | |
| 10 | 28 | GM | @FormerProdigy | David Navara | 2583 | 7.5 | 64 | |
| 11 | 48 | CM | @Germanovs_Georgijs | Georgijs Germanovs | 2466 | 7.5 | 60 | |
| 12 | 150 | GM | @Dr_Tyger | Haowen Xue | 2678 | 7.5 | 47.5 | |
| 13 | 23 | GM | @Sanan_Sjugirov | Sanan Sjugirov | 2622 | 7 | 72.5 | |
| 14 | 22 | GM | @Volodar_Murzin | Volodar Murzin | 2628 | 7 | 71 | |
| 15 | 21 | GM | @Zhigalko_Sergei | Sergei Zhigalko | 2619 | 7 | 70.5 | |
| 16 | 17 | GM | @Vaathi_Coming | Aravindh Chithambaram | 2637 | 7 | 70.5 | |
| 17 | 47 | GM | @Savva_KraSavva | Savva Vetokhin | 2464 | 7 | 66 | |
| 18 | 54 | IM | @Individoom | Bakhtiyar Askarov | 2423 | 7 | 65 | |
| 19 | 42 | IM | @MonsterChess_uz | Mukhammadali Abdurakhmonov | 2478 | 7 | 63 | |
| 20 | 6 | CM | @Nicki2013 | Nikolay Kleimenov | 2425 | 7 | 58.5 | |
| 35 | 58 | IM | @Meri-Arabidze | Meri Arabidze | 2360 | 6 | 59 |
Prizes: Artemiev $400, Sarana $250, Bluebaum $150, Sevian $100, $100.
Freestyle Friday is Chess.com’s weekly tournament dedicated to Freestyle Chess for titled players. The tournament begins at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time/17:00 Central European/20:30 Indian Standard Time.
