A day after becoming the first 3500-rated Chess.com Blitz player in site history, GM Hikaru Nakamura upped his record to 3503 while streaming Titled Tuesday live from Sithonia, Greece on October 6. Unfortunately for Nakamura, he did not ultimately win the tournament, an honor which went to GM Vladislav Artemiev after he defeated Nakamura in the final round.

Titled Tuesday ft. the highest-rated blitz player ever 🐐 @GMHikaru https://t.co/UYVbs2frlJ

— Chess.com ( @chesscom) October 6, 2026

Broadcast

In case you missed it, here's this week's broadcast live from Greece:

Recap

Nakamura had reached exactly 3500 before the event, explaining to Chess.com's Tarjei Svensen, "Unless I'm only going to skip [Titled Tuesday and 3 0 Thursday] every week, there's no way even to keep my rating where it is... I view this as very much a one-time thing and that's why I also I made it a big point to for it yesterday."

That's not a typo - Hikaru hits 3500! 👏 https://t.co/ZEJ3EPUCEO

— Chess.com ( @chesscom) October 5, 2026

"My goal in Titled Tuesday [is] like every Titled Tuesday," he also indicated, meaning victory. "First and foremost, because there are actually people watching [in person], I'd like to be competitive where I'm not losing a bunch of games early. That's the starting point."

Nakamura achieved that goal, starting with two self described smooth games, but a draw in the fourth round kept him off the roll of perfect players entering the first break in play. Artemiev was among the 17 who did make 4/4, a list which also included last week's victor GM Wesley So as well as GMs Sina Movahed, Alexey Sarana, Awonder Liang, and Liem Le, among others.

As usual, the list of perfect players quickly dwindled exiting the break. Artemiev and So lost to Movahed and Liang in round five, and by the end of round six, only three remained perfect: Le, Sarana, and FM Dincer Tasdogen.

A round farther in, that list was down to one. Nakamura contributed by defeating Sarana out of a theoretically drawn opening that Sarana either didn't know or remember, or chose not to pursue.

Meanwhile, Le wiped out Tasdogen in just 26 moves.

Le would extend his perfect score to 8/8 in the next round by delivering Nakamura's first loss of the event, with only GM Dmitrij Kollars a half-point behind. During the second break, Nakamura entertained questions from the live audience. Asked his opinion of the theoretical maximum Chess.com rating in light of his extension of the record, Nakamura placed it around 3550—an opinion mirrored by what he told Svensen before the event on whether 3600 was possible: "I am basically handicapped unless I were to stop streaming or playing Titled Tuesday, which I won't do for obvious reasons."

On the slightly less serious matter of his ideal karaoke song, he selected "John Lennon's 'Imagine', something like that."

Coming out of the break, the tide turned against Le and toward Kollars, who won their matchup and ended the perfect bid for another week. (Next week's perfection bounty is an even $5,000, the same as first and second place combined.) Meanwhile, Nakamura turned his game against GM Vincent Keymer around in the waning moments of mutual time trouble, putting the wind back in his sails. "Let's go, let's go, let's go" he repeated as victory was secured.

Another player moving into contention was GM Alexander Grischuk, and in the 10th round he delivered Le's second straight defeat with a strong queen sacrifice.

Artemiev, Nakamura, and GM Ihor Samunenkov all also won in the 10th round, while Kollars drew his game with Sarana, putting Kollars on 9/10 and Artemiev, Nakamura, Samunenkov, and Grischuk all on 8.5/10.

Hoping for a direct encounter with Kollars, Nakamura instead got Artemiev as his opponent, and a second straight game with Black to boot. Kollars faced Grischuk instead. Given the tiebreak situation, wins for Nakamura and Grischuk would have ultimately given Nakamura the tournament victory in front of the gathered crowd.

Both games went down to the wire, but that situation ultimately favored Artemiev in his game with Nakamura, who made an unnatural and incorrect capture that turned a modest advantage into equality. Artemiev then punished another wrong Nakamura move and soon coaxed resignation. 

Grischuk eventually toppled Kollars, so the winner of Artemiev vs. Nakamura was indeed the tournament winner. Grischuk and Sarana matched Artemiev on 9.5/11, but placed second and third on tiebreaks. Nakamura fell to ninth place, still among the paid positions but a far cry from where he wanted to, and where with one round left he seemed almost destined to, end up.

The Titled Tuesday win for Artemiev was his first since he won three out of four from February 16 to March 9 back in 2021.

Final Standings

Prize Table

*Bounty grows by $250 per week without a perfect score, and resets once a perfect score has been achieved.

Game And Move Of The Day