GM Hikaru Nakamura's record-breaking victory streak in the Bullet Brawl arena has finally come to an end after GM Alireza Firouzja storm home to snatch first place in the 232-strong player event on Saturday.

Firouzja finished on 170 points, four ahead of Nakamura and a further seven ahead of GM Ediz Gurel. GM Matthias Bluebaum rounded out the top four, while WIM Melika Mohammadi captured the $100 best women's prize.

The next edition of Bullet Brawl will begin on Saturday, November 7, at 12 p.m. ET / 17:00 CET / 9:30 p.m. IST.

Standings

(Full final standings here.)

Saturday's Bullet Brawl was arguably the strongest in the event's history, featuring seven super-GMs: Magnus Carlsen, Nakamura, Firouzja, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Arjun Erigaisi, Amin Tabatabaei, and Parham Maghsoodloo.

The presence of regulars contenders such as GMs Oleksandr Bortnyk, Haowen Xue, Matthias Bluebaum, and Christopher Yoo, alongside the prodigious GMs Gurel and Faustino Oro, made Nakamura's bid to extend his record-breaking winning streak all the more challenging.

A blistering 14/15 start for Nakamura was an excellent platform to defend his title, made even sweeter by the fact that he defeated Firouzja twice during that stretch. In their first encounter, the American sacrificed his queen for a rook and bishop before putting on a masterclass in piece play.

Later, Nakamura once again heroed his minor pieces, this time against Bluebaum, spotting the incisive 15.Bxe6!! and converting easily after the tactical shot.

By the time the final quarter began, Nakamura had built a commanding 16-point lead. However, the tournament took an unexpected turn at the 23-minute mark when the leader accidentally queued things became interesting when the leader accidentally queued for a bullet game outside of the arena and didn't realize until the game was over. With his lead reduced to 13 points, Gurel and Firouzja remained within striking distance.

Right on cue, Firouzja produced some of his best chess of the day and emerged as the greatest threat to Nakamura's 73rd title bid. The French-representative scored 13.5/15 in the last quarter against world-class opposition.

Vietnamese GM Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son was among Firouzja's victims. In a messy middlegame, the world number 10 found a timely intermezzo that secured a winning position and kept his charge rolling. See if you can spot the winning combination below.

Firouzja also faced Nakamura for the final time, in what proved to be a decisive encounter in determining the tournament's winner. Playing the Caro-Kann Defense, Firouzja declined the conventional 2...d5, instead opting for 2...d6!?, adopting an Old Indian Defense setup. The opening gamble paid off, and Firouzja eventually confirmed a crucial victory.

An 11-move win over Xue in the next game followed by a 25-move draw with Gurel gave Firouzja the cushion required he needed to deny Nakamura another title.

With this victory, he moves into equal ninth on the all-time leaderboard despite playing in considerably fewer editions than most of the players around him.

All-Time Leaderboard

Prizes: Firouzja $400, Nakamura $250, Gurel $150, Bluebaum $100, Mohammadi $100.

How to review games?
The games from this week's Bullet Brawl can be found here.