World numbers one and two Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura will battle for the $100,000 third-place prize on the final day of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Las Vegas. Carlsen lost his first game of the day to GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu but blasted back to win the next five, including two against GM Arjun Erigaisi. Nakamura made short work of GM Wesley So before booking the match against Carlsen by beating GM Fabiano Caruana in tiebreaks.
The final matches are on Sunday, July 20, starting at 2 p.m. ET / 20:00 CEST / 11.30 p.m. IST.
Lower Bracket
Day four in Las Vegas was all about the Lower Bracket, with Carlsen and Nakamura both needing to win two matches, the second against players dropping down from the Upper Bracket, to reach the third-place match.
Nakamura 1.5-0.5 So
Nakamura would play two all-U.S. matches on day four, and the first couldn’t have gone much better for him. Both he and So had an advantage at some point in the first 10+10 game, but nothing obvious, and the game fizzled out into a 50-move draw.
Then in the second clash, a 1.e4 c5 “Sicilian,” So put his knight in front of his pawn on d6 on move six and stubbornly refused to correct the mistake in subsequent moves. The result? A trapped queen and a 17-move win for Nakamura!
Wesley So resigns in only 17 moves and it’s Hikaru Nakamura who continues in the battle for the $100,000 3rd place! https://t.co/FuZhNpQv4O pic.twitter.com/tOLzz6m0Sy
— chess24 (@chess24com) July 19, 2025
The other opening match of the day was an order of magnitude more intense!
Carlsen 3-1 Praggnanandhaa
Praggnanandhaa’s win over Carlsen on the first day of the event was a big part of why the world number-one was immediately out of the hunt for the top prize in Las Vegas. On day four, he did it again, shrugging off Carlsen’s threat of mate-in-one at the end to set about executing a mate-in-four.
Praggnanandhaa beats World no. 1 Magnus Carlsen again in Las Vegas! https://t.co/IAkS9xzu3J pic.twitter.com/HW0sImIZ3N
— chess24 (@chess24com) July 19, 2025
It was an extraordinary game where Carlsen had been all-but forced into a desperate queen sacrifice that gave Praggnanandhaa so much of an advantage he could blunder back a piece and still be on top.
Carlsen was staring down the barrel of having to play for seventh place on the final day, but as so often in the past, he summoned all his resources to win a trademark game and level the scores. A small structural edge was converted seamlessly into an instructive win.
That’s our Game of the Day, which will has been analyzed by GM Rafael Leitao.
A one-move hesitation with 10.Kb1? in the first 5+2 game and Carlsen took over before eventually finishing with a fine attack featuring a temporary queen sac and fork.
Here’s that final sequence at full speed:
Carlsen takes the lead with a powerful blitz win against Praggnanandhaa as both players play on seconds!#FreestyleChess pic.twitter.com/XNjgmu5UcS
— chess24 (@chess24com) July 19, 2025
That meant Praggnanandhaa was now in a must-win situation, and he did get some chances, but they were very tricky. For instance, the last was to play 15…f6!! here.
Carlsen wins a 3rd game in a row to clinch victory against Praggnanandhaa despite losing their 1st game today! https://t.co/o7ct1ihR6h pic.twitter.com/r5qa90847R
— chess24 (@chess24com) July 19, 2025
Carlsen had clinched the match and was on a roll which, after a 45-minute break, would continue.
Carlsen 2-0 Arjun
Arjun had been knocked out of the Upper Bracket 2-0 by GM Levon Aronian the day before, and he suffered the same fate against Carlsen. A promising opening for the Indian star in the first 10-minute game was spoiled when he allowed a strong exchange sac, giving Carlsen just the kind of positional play he thrives in. Then 31.b4! posed problems Arjun didn’t manage to solve.
Arjun then had to win on demand, but found himself worse in four moves with the white pieces. To Arjun’s credit, he got back into the game and was even better for a while, but later he needed to find some fantastic piece sacrifices just to stay in the game. He didn’t, and after the exchange sacrifice 20…Rxg5! there was no way back.
So a day that had started tough for Carlsen ended perfectly, and, by winning four matches in a row, he’s earned the maximum he could after the disappointment of day one—the right to fight for third place and $100,000. His opponent there would be decided in a huge battle.
Nakamura 3-1 Caruana
After this match was over, Nakamura told GMs Judit Polgar, Peter Leko, and Niclas Huschenbeth:
When I look at the tournament thus far I felt like I was the one player who was perhaps unlucky from the standpoint that with the exception of a couple of very critical moments against Levon I’ve more or less played a perfect tournament. And then today I got bad positions in every game except the last one, and I was definitely lucky!
Today I got bad positions in every game except the last one, and I was definitely lucky!
—Hikaru Nakamura
That things were going to be difficult for Nakamura against his countryman became clear as he prepared for the first game. He was joined by the world number-one and, after all, what could be better?
The wrong position occurred when preparing for the 1st 10-minute games vs. Arjun/Caruana — here’s Carlsen’s arrival, with the queens on a1/a8 instead of b1/b8! pic.twitter.com/oliCU70BgU
— chess24 (@chess24com) July 20, 2025
There was a twist, however. Nakamura confessed:
Magnus for the first time in three days suddenly comes over and wants to analyze and it happens to be the one time that I think I have the position correct initially, and then I made some moves, and then I had the queen and the knight on the wrong squares by the time he came. Of course the prep didn’t work out!
Nakamura compared it to a famous incident with GM Peter Svidler and former World Champion Garry Kasparov in St. Louis, adding, “Garry was not kind of upset, he was very, very upset about it, because you don’t waste time analyzing the wrong position. It’s not acceptable, but Magnus didn’t seem to mind!”
Magnus didn’t seem to mind!
—Nakamura on setting up the position wrongly for analysis with Carlsen
It helped, of course, that Carlsen won his game against Arjun, while Nakamura was lost for huge swathes of the game against Caruana. There are too many misses to detail, but the one that stands out is the last—Caruana forced a draw by repetition in what was still a winning position.
After that mayhem, the second 10-minute game was much quieter, and we went to five-minute chess.
The culmination of the match was the first blitz game, where, after playing 34.Qa3! with 10 seconds on his clock, it seemed clear to Nakamura, and the commentators, that the game was over. It was, but it wasn’t quite as simple as delivering a quick checkmate. An idea with Rg1-g8 had to be spotted, and when Nakamura missed that, and suddenly realized there was only a two and not a five-second increment, he panicked, and things lurched out of control.
After I missed it we’re down to seconds, the fans are making noises, you can’t concentrate, and this turned into this complete… I was just moving fast, treating it like a game of bullet chess!
There was a crazy finish to the 1st Nakamura-Caruana blitz game! https://t.co/wXJyMuoS8r pic.twitter.com/1IXBpwJCfT
— chess24 (@chess24com) July 20, 2025
In that chaos Caruana twice missed killer blows before Nakamura took the win.
In the final blitz game Caruana needed to win, but he was worse by move one, in trouble by move six, and lost by move 11. Although some swings in evaluation followed, it was only ever a question of how much better Nakamura’s position was before he won again.
Nakamura recapped the day’s action himself:
So we couldn’t have asked for more going into Sunday’s final day. Carlsen and Nakamura will face off to decide third place, with the winner getting $100,000 and the loser $60,000.
Tomorrow, they face each other for 3rd place in Vegas. #FreestyleChess pic.twitter.com/gJsbOD9Jed
— Chess.com (@chesscom) July 19, 2025
And, of course, GM Levon Aronian will take on GM Hans Niemann for the $200,000 top prize, with $140,000 going to the runner-up. That’s not all, as we’ll also see matches for fifth ($50,000) and seventh ($30,000) place, featuring the players who were defeated on Saturday.
Don’t miss it!
How to Watch
The $750,000 3rd leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam will be played in Las Vegas, Nevada on July 16th – 20th. Participants include GMs Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Arjun Erigaisi, Fabiano Caruana, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Wesley So, Levon Aronian, Leinier Dominguez and Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa. All games are played in freestyle chess.
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