Nakamura Dominates Titled Tuesday In Nearly Perfect Effort

GM Hikaru Nakamura began Titled Tuesday on November 18 with 10/10 to lock up first place with a round to spare. He was held to a draw in the last round by GM Jeffery Xiong, but Nakamura’s dominant 10.5/11 score—nearly accomplishing the same feat as GM Magnus Carlsen‘s 11/11 the Tuesday before—was still enough to win by a 1.5-point margin.

Broadcast

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

CCT Standings

The updated Champions Chess Tour (CCT) autumn standings, which will help determine at least six spots in the next Esports World Cup, are as follows. A week after falling into third place, Nakamura took back second.

Recap

With Nakamura now the one looking for 11/11, GM Hans Niemann was his next obstacle. Nakamura’s strategy was clear from the outset: “He’s going to try to bore Hans Niemann to death,” as Howell put it during the opening. Soon enough, Niemann dropped two pieces for a rook, and that was the end of the competitive part of the game.

Coming out of the second break, Nakamura’s run at perfection was in big trouble, but he persisted in the position and soon enough, on move 29, delivered a Puzzle Rush-like threat that went unseen by GM Vladimir Fedoseev.

At this point, an 11/11 score almost seemed inevitable as Nakamura took his reprieve and faced GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave next. The game went similarly to Nakamura’s win over Niemann two rounds before: his opponent with Black blundered material and never recovered. Vachier-Lagrave fought valiantly before finally succumbing on move 86 and, with that, Nakamura had won the tournament.

But his work was not done. With the perfect score on the horizon, only Xiong was standing in Nakamura’s way. As against Fedoseev, however, Nakamura’s position was mediocre throughout much of the game. This time, he couldn’t generate any significant threats, and the endgame eventually fizzled into a draw.

The result was enough for Xiong to take second place after GM Rasmus Svane, who was tied with him in the standings entering the round, stayed tied after also making a draw. Svane had reached that position by delivering Carlsen’s second loss of the tournament the round before, after Carlsen thought he had found a discovered attack, but instantly realized—going for the facepalm-with-disbelieving-laugh combo in reaction before Svane even made his next move—that Svane’s queen was defended.

While Nakamura wasn’t quite able to lock up the third perfect tournament of his career, he did win his second Titled Tuesday of the Autumn Split and his ninth of 2025. After Xiong and Svane, the rest of the top six consisted of GMs Alexander Grischuk, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, and Carlsen, while FM Rose Atwell won her second straight women’s prize

November 18 Titled Tuesday | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings.)