GMs Tuan Minh Le, Hikaru Nakamura and Jose Martinez celebrated the new year by winning the first three 3 0 Thursday tournaments of 2026. Le overcame back-to-back losses to catch up and win the first event with a 9/11 score. Nakamura dominated the second tournament, with 10/11, and Martinez set a new record with a spectacular 10.5/11 in the third event.
Minh Le Catches Sarana In Photo Finish
Minh Le started well in the first tournament of the day, winning in the first four rounds. His fourth round win against GM Pranav Anand proved to be a critical game, as both players finished with nine points.
After that win, Le’s chances took a serious hit, as he lost in rounds five and six against GMs Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son and Ian Nepomniachtchi. However, in an 11-round event, there’s time to strike back, and Minh Le won each of his six remaining games.
Heading into the final round, GM Alexey Sarana led by a full point with 9/10. Minh Le, Pranav and FM Artin Ashraf were each in striking distance. That meant that the game between Sarana and Le would decide the event. In a complicated fight, Sarana made the decisive mistake.
With that result, both Sarana and Le ended 9/11, but Minh Le had the better tiebreaks and won the tournament. With the next best tiebreaks, Pranav took second place, while Sarana ended in third with the same score. The top woman’s prize went to FM Anastasia Avramidou with six points.
Nakamura Dominates
In the first tournament, Nakamura was in slightly poor form compared to his incredible standards, finishing with 8/11. By the second tournament, he had shaken off any possible rust accumulated over the holidays and ran away with the event, scoring 10/11. His next closest competitors were Martinez and GM Jeffery Xiong, who each finished with 8.5 points.
Nakamura lost to Martinez in round five, but scored a crucial win in the sixth round against another world championship candidate, GM Fabiano Caruana.
In round seven, Nakamura defeated Xiong to reach a tie for first place. He then faced a tough test in the ninth round against GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac. Nakamura made an unsound bishop sacrifice and was briefly lost, before turning the tables.
Nakamura cemented his victory by winning the final two rounds as well against GM Eric Hansen and IM Renato Terry. Fifteen-year-old WFM Anastasiia Hnatyshyn won the top woman’s prize with five points.
Martinez Sets 3 0 Thursday Record
In the third tournament, Martinez improved on his second place finish earlier in the day, leaving little-doubt in the fight for first place by scoring an unprecedented 10.5/11. The only thing preventing him from reaching the fist perfect score in the history of the event was a draw with Terry in the sixth round. Martinez never trailed throughout the tournament, winning game after game with his patented double-fianchetto setup. His third-round win against GM Aravindh Chithambaram is a good example of his confident play.
Martinez defeated Xiong in the seventh round, giving him the sole lead in the tournament, a lead that only grew for the remainder of the event.
Xiong finished in second place with 9/11, followed by Terry with eight points. It was a strong performance, but ended Terry’s remarkable streak of five straight weeks with a 3 0 Thursday victory. His tournament ended on a down-note as Aravindh found an impressive queen sacrifice against him in the last round.
Martinez now has the longest ongoing winning-streak in the event, having won a tournament each of the last three weeks that it’s been held.
WFM Mahsa Alavi won the top women’s prize with six points.
3 0 Thursday features three tournaments every week for titled players. The events are on Thursday every week at 11 a.m., 4 p.m., and 9 p.m. ET / 17:00, 22:00, and 3 a.m. (+1) CET / 9:30 p.m., 2:30 a.m. (+1), and 7:30 a.m. (+1) IST.
