Carlsen Kicks Off Freestyle Friday 2026 With Victory

GM Magnus Carlsen won Freestyle Friday four times in 2025, and he has started 2026 on the right foot by winning the January 2 edition. He did not go wire-to-wire, losing in rounds three and nine, but it was enough to win on tiebreaks over GM Matthias Bluebaum, who also scored nine points. GM Dmitry Andreikin finished sole third on 8.5/11.

Carlsen’s first loss came against GM Minh Le, who was one of two players to start on 5/5. The other, GM Bogdan Daniel Deac, beat Le in round six to become the last player on a perfect score. That distinction did not survive his seventh-round encounter with Carlsen, however, after which there was a six-way tie for first place.

All six co-leaders faced off in the eighth round: Deac playing IM Renato Terry, Carlsen against GM Alexey Sarana, and GM Jeffery Xiong versus Le. Xiong-Le ended up an uneventful draw, but the other two games were anything but. Deac and Sarana spent a lot of time early on, both eventually falling a full minute behind on the clock and with difficult positions to boot. Sarana gradually got crushed before he ultimately did flag, albeit in a bit of sad irony as Carlsen had just made a move the computer… did not like.

Deac, on the other hand, managed to create a mutual time scramble and eventually was able to draw the game. This result gave Carlsen the sole lead in the tournament, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that was the end of the competitive portion of the tournament.

But, of course, it was not. Coming out of the break in the ninth round, Carlsen fell a pawn behind Xiong, and then two, and then in the endgame was forced to give up a piece. Carlsen resigned shortly after Deac had also just lost, to GM Pranesh M, who was streaming for Freestyle Chess. A third game, Andreikin-Le, was equal for some time but Andreikin would suddenly lose on both the board and then the clock.

Xiong and Le were now co-leaders, but they had just played two rounds prior, and so the 10th round instead brought one matchup between Xiong and Pranesh, and another between Le and Bluebaum. In a bit of a shock, both leaders would lose. The first game went by real quick, Pranesh winning, putting all eyes on the other contest. Le and Bluebaum committed mutual blunders, but Bluebaum’s came first, and the old aphorism that “the player who wins is the one who makes the next-to-last mistake” held true. While the players would mutually reach desperate time trouble, Bluebaum stayed calm, eventually made a second queen, and won.

Carlsen, Pranesh (playing each other), and Bluebaum (facing Le) all now had scores of 8/10. arlsen would drop a pawn against Pranesh, but his pieces soon began to converge on Pranesh’s king, eventually winning an exchange and then the game.

Bluebaum actually won his game first, needing just 19 moves to briefly take the tournament lead, but unfortunately for him his tiebreaks were not nearly strong enough to survive Carlsen’s victory.

That left Sarana and Andreikin fighting for third place. Andreikin eventually got there with a win on time, but it was far from a dirty flag: Sarana was bitter-ending the dead-lost game with just a rook against Andreikin’s rook, bishop, and crucial pawn.

The last paid positions did not go to anyone mentioned yet, as Deac, Le, Sarana, and Xiong all wound up on 7.5 points. It was IM Eray Kilic in fourth place on eight points, with his tiebreaks besting Pranesh and three others. IM Le Thao Nguyen Pham, who began the tournament with 5/6, won the women’s prize.

January 2 Freestyle Friday | Final Standings (Top 20)