GM Wesley So won Titled Tuesday on September 29, starting 7/7 on his way to a 9.5-point total. That score was enough for an outright victory after the top three boards in the final round, including his own, all ended in draws. One of the key figures of the upcoming Grandmasters documentary, So scored his first Titled Tuesday victory of the year, and fifth in just 75 attempts ever (a 6.7% win rate better than most 10-time winners).

GM Denis Lazavik took second place with the top tiebreak in a seven-way tie on nine points.

Broadcast

In case you missed it, here's this week's broadcast with GM Robert Hess:

Recap

https://t.co/tRvPHraUOj
The Olympiad proved to be a useful warm up after all for the real event! @chesscom 😀🏆 🥇 🎉💪

— Wesley So ( @WesleySo_) September 29, 2026

So and Lazavik were among the 17 players to start 4/4, a list that did not include some usual suspects such as GM Hikaru Nakamura, who reached a Chess.com record 3470 blitz rating just before the event started, or last week's victor GM Alireza Firouzja, whose third-round win over GM Luca Moroni led Hess to the line of the week when he spotted the position after 21 moves: "I've never been more confused ever looking at a chess game... Can I resign for both players?"

In the wild position, Moroni went for broke, but there was no mate to be found as Firouzja picked up a second queen and the win.

A round earlier, there was a mate to be found in IM Wagh Suyog's upset bid over another Titled Tuesday regular, GM Alexey Sarana, but it was such a crazy one that even Hess, from the comfort of the commentator chair, didn't quite see it all the way through. Sarana went on to win.

Just two rounds after the first break, the number of players on 100 percent was down from 17 to two: So and GM Sina Movahed. Movahed got the white pieces in their seventh-round encounter, and for a while it seemed he would be the player to reach 7/7. 

Lazavik and GM Zhamsaran Tsydypov were the only players a half-point back of So, who got White against Lazavik and left his king in the middle of the board to lift a rook to c3. The game eventually reached a draw, which was good enough for So to keep the sole lead thanks to GM Daniil Dubov's win over Tsydypov. The perfect score bounty remains untouched since its inception, however, and will stand at $4,750 next week.

So's only victory in the last four rounds, to go with his three draws, came out of the break, with Black against Dubov. Similar to the round-three Moroni-Firouzja game, Dubov-So was "pandemonium" on the board, with a black pawn deep in White's territory. The position resolved into a rook ending that the engine saw as equal but where Hess "just cannot see a future where Dubov survives this game." It didn't help Dubov that he ended up under 30 seconds on the clock while So still had over two minutes, and Hess was proved correct as So took control of the game and retained the lead in the standings.

Only GMs Dmitry Andreikin and Aravindh Chithambaram kept within a half-point, and the Berlin Draw ensued between So and Andreikin in round 10, turning Aravindh vs. Lazavik into a key game, where Lazavik had an advantage after Aravindh played four consecutive, unproductive queen moves in the early middlegame. Aravindh made Lazavik work to complete the full point, but he was up to the task.

With So sitting on 9/10, Lazavik's win made him one of four players on 8.5 points, the others being GMs Haik Martirosyan, Frederik Svane, and Andreikin. Martirosyan outplayed So in the opening of their game, but So got him back and more in the middlegame. Andreikin had already drawn with GM Pranav Venkatesh by the time So repeated moves with Martirosyan, unable to see a path forward. The winner of Lazavik vs. Svane would have joined So in the lead, and Lazavik's tiebreaks were better, but that game also fizzled into a draw, leaving So alone on his 9.5 points.

Andreikin, Aravindh, and Martirosyan rounded out the top five after So and Lazavik. Aravindh and Martirosyan survived first-round losses to do so, against NMs Leandro Ulloa of Ecuador and Brian Jiang of Canada, respectively.

Final Standings

Prize Table

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

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