Carlsen Takes Down Everyone En Route To 11/11

Eleven was the number of the day, with GM Magnus Carlsen winning the 11th Titled Tuesday of the current season on November 11 by scoring a perfect 11/11. In the last four rounds, he toppled a quartet of top rivals in GMs Hans Niemann, Alireza Firouzja, Dmitry Andreikin—taking the tournament with one round to spare—and Oleksandr Bortnyk.

the GOAT has a sense of humor @MagnusCarlsen 🐐 pic.twitter.com/MH0QqLh4db

— Chess.com (@chesscom) November 11, 2025

It was Carlsen’s 41st Titled Tuesday victory all-time and his fourth perfect score, the latter mark representing twice as many as anyone else (GM Hikaru Nakamura with two). It was also his fourth tournament win of the current season.

Broadcast

If you missed the official Take Take Take broadcast with GM David Howell and WFM Maud Rodsmoen, you can catch it below!

CCT Standings

The updated Champions Chess Tour (CCT) autumn standings, which will help determine six spots in the next Esports World Cup, are as follows. Firouzja leapfrogged Nakamura with two weeks left in the split.

Recap

Carlsen wasn’t the only of the 396 players to begin with a perfect score, of course. After six rounds, three players had yet to lose or draw, two of whom weren’t unexpected: Carlsen and Niemann. The third, IM Joaquin Fiorito, achieved a surprise 6/6 start after defeating Firouzja in the sixth round. In the next round, however, Carlsen handled Fiorito relatively easily to reach 7/7. Meanwhile, Niemann took on Nakamura with Black. While he held the edge on both the board and the clock for most of the game, Niemann settled for a draw, leaving Carlsen as the last perfect player—a status he never lost grasp of.

Carlsen vs. Niemann is a matchup that will always garner attention no matter the context, and here came another one in round eight. Niemann had the opposite experience from the game before, down on time and without much in the way of winning chances. It ended up perhaps Carlsen’s steadiest win of the 11.

In combination with GM Andrew Tang getting into a time scramble against Nakamura and coming out ahead, Magnus now led the field by a full point.

Carlsen’s ninth round game against Firouzja turned out to be the closest he would come to losing perfection. Firouzja got what Rodsmoen called “the worst bishop pair I’ve ever seen” but later gained the upper ground, with Carlsen lamenting his position on stream. Down a piece, Carlsen kept pushing, and came through to keep up his perfect run.

Carlsen’s opponents didn’t get any easier, with Andreikin in the 10th round, but Andreikin neglected his back rank and lost a piece because of it. “Even the best players in the world can mess up back rank mates and step into those kinds of tactics,” Rodsmoen observed.

The tournament clinched, with Carlsen on 10 points and only two players with even 8.5 points, there was still the drama of perfection in play. Bortnyk fell behind a minute on the clock and the engine thought neither player took full advantage of their chances on moves 19-24. In the end, however, Carlsen ended up winning a piece for just a pawn. Carlsen is great enough in endgames with equal material, as he demonstrated against Niemann; an endgame ahead in material is routine.

“It is a big achievement, but since I’ve done it before, it’s not like I’m going to give everything to do it,” Carlsen would say in his postgame interview about scoring 100 percent. Indeed, in several games, including against Niemann, a draw was not going to be a devastating result for Carlsen. But it is still fun for the fans to see the greatest players play great.

While Carlsen dominated, who would take second place was unclear until the end. Ultimately, Firouzja’s losses to Fiorito and Carlsen were the only games he did not win all tournament. In the last round, Firouzja pinned GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda down into passivity and eventually won a piece and then the game out of it.

GM Ian Nepomniachtchi would win his last six games after a relatively slow start to finish in third. Fourth-place GM Aman Tabatabaei missed the first round, making his nine points impressive but also leaving him with the worse tiebreaks than Firouzja or Nepomniachtchi. Also earning cash were Andreikin, Nakamura, and women’s prize winner FM Rose Atwell.

November 11 Titled Tuesday | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings.)