In September, IM Nhat Minh To won the 2025 Duck Chess Championship. In October, he conquered another variant, winning the 2025 Seirawan Chess Championship. Minh To did it the hard way, losing his very first match, and then having to win the Grand Final and Grand Final reset against GM Jeffery Xiong.
Knockout Bracket
The Knockout was an eight-player double-elimination tournament, so players could lose two matches before they were fully eliminated. Whoever reached 2.5 points first won each match, and the time control was 3+2.
What is Seirawan Chess?
Seirawan Chess was invented by GM Yasser Seirawan and FM Bruce Harper, who was one of the co-commentators for the tournament. You can think of it as a variant of another variant. World Champion Jose Raul Capablanca invented a variant, played on a 10×8 board with two additional pieces, the hawk and the elephant. The hawk is a combination of a bishop and knight, while the elephant combines a knight and rook.
Unlike Capablanca’s variant, Seirawan Chess adds the two new pieces when a player develops a piece off of the back rank. Players can add the pieces immediately or wait for an opportune moment later in the game. Harper considers the elephant to be worth about eight points and the hawk, about seven, making them the next most powerful pieces after the queen.
Winner’s Bracket
In addition to the finalists, mentioned above, the other participants who won qualifiers the day before were GM Oleksandr Bortnyk, Ondrej Sigut, NM Ionatan Giurgiu, Patrik Saar, Matei-Maria Uta, and Cesar Talledo.
In the first round Bortynk advanced easily, 3-0 against Sigut. Xiong had a tougher battle against Giugiu, but advanced 3-1. Talledo defeated Minh To 2.5-1.5. The hardest fight was between Saar and Uta, which went to a bullet tiebreak. It’s hard enough to play a variant normally, but imagine the pressure of a tiebreak game with a 1+2 time control and two Seirawan pieces on the board.
The highlight of the second round was the all-GM matchup between Xiong and Bortnyk. Bortnyk repeatedly tried his favorite Jobava London setup in both of his white games, prompting Chess.com’s Community Coordinator, Lucas Schwarzbach to comment, “OMG even in Seirawan we can’t be free of the London.” It worked out for Bortnyk in his first white game, but Xiong was ready the second time and won the match convincingly, 3-1.
Talledo joined Xiong in the Winner’s Final by defeating Saar 3-1. In their match, Xiong began with a devastating attack. His rook sacrifice on f6 is a powerful attacking idea regardless of what version of the game you’re playing and soon led to checkmate.
Xiong kept going and finished the match 3-0 to reach the Grand Final.
Loser’s Bracket
In the Losers Bracket, any defeat would knock a player out of the tournament. In the first Losers matches Giurgiu eliminated Sigut 3-0 and Minh To eliminated Uta 3-1. Minh To went on to play one of the most exciting matches of the day, against Bortnyk. Bortnyk won on demand in the fourth game to send the match to tiebreaks.
The commentators were highly skeptical of Bortnyk’s cramped position (above) in the tiebreaks. It can generally be hard to find good squares for every piece when you don’t have much space in regular chess. With two extra pieces per side, it makes a lack of space even more dangerous. Minh To won the game to advance and face the winner of another tiebreaker, Giurgiu, who took advantage of his opponent’s time-pressure blunders in the final few seconds of the game.
Those tiebreakers set up a Losers Semifinal match between Minh To and Giurgiu. Minh To joined the chat after his match with Bortnyk and was thrilled to have defeated such a strong opponent. He kept the momentum going in his next match, smoothly defeating Giurgiu 3-0. This earned him a rematch with Talledo, who had defeated Minh To in the first round.
Talledo started well in the Losers Final, winning the first game with a big time advantage. Then Minh To struck back, winning the next two games and forcing Talledo into a must-win final game. Talledo played extremely aggressively, sacrificing a bishop right out of the opening.
White didn’t get enough for the sacrificed piece and Minh To won the game, taking the match 3-1 and earning a spot in the Grand Final.
Grand Final
Xiong won the first game of the finals decisively and looked on course to take a commanding 2-0 lead, as he won material in the second game. The players reached an endgame where Xiong’s rook and bishop appeared to be handling Minh To’s hawk, but one mistake allowed a deadly fork, immediately tying the match.
Mihn To kept his momentum going in the next game, winning smoothly with the black pieces. He dominated the fourth game as well, making it three wins in a row to take the match!
Because the event was double-elimination, Minh To had to defeat Xiong in one more match to take the title. He started well, overcoming a large time deficit to win the first game with Black. Xiong finally returned to form in game two, winning a highly imbalanced endgame that could have occurred in regular chess as well.
Both sides advanced their pawn majorities. Minh To eventually promoted the a-pawn but misclicked and made a bishop instead. It didn’t work well and Xiong eventually checkmated the white king on Black’s back rank.
The third game reached another imbalanced endgame, with only standard chess pieces. Xiong’s rook and three pawns appeared ready to possibly overwhelm Minh To’s rook and bishop, but in the time scramble, Minh To found a bishop fork to win a rook and put him a draw away from the title. He won convincingly with White in the final game to win the match 3-1 and take the title.
In a post-match interview, the winner explained that he considered Xiong the favorite in the event and had analyzed his opponent’s Seirawan Chess history. He credited his general success in chess variations to experience. He has played more games in these variants than most of his opponents. When asked what he would add to Seirawan Chess to make a new variant, he wanted to combine his titles and add a duck.
We’re left wondering how many more of the Chess.com Community Championship titles Minh To will take before someone can stop him!
How to rewatch?
You could watch the broadcast on the Chess.com Community Twitch and YouTube channels. Results and info can be found on our dedicated events page.
The live broadcast was hosted by FM Bruce Harper, the co-creator of the variant, and WIM Ayelen Martinez.
The Chess.com Seirawan Chess Championship is part of the Chess.com Community Championships series. The tournament was decided with an eight-player double-elimination bracket. Each competitor qualified via one of eight arenas with a 3+2 time control.
