Nakamura Wins 14th Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix
GM Hikaru Nakamura won the 14th Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix, his third since the start of the series. The American grandmaster beat Ukrainian GM Vladimir Onischuk 2-1 in the knockout final and is the new leader in the overall Grand Prix standings.
The next Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix will be played on September 8 at 10 a.m. Pacific / 19:00 Central Europe.
The 14th Speed Chess Grand Prix tournament was held on Tuesday, September 1, with 782 participants. It was Onischuk who won the Swiss part as the only player to finish on 9/10.
The live broadcast of the tournament.
Onischuk played the ultimate (but unintended!) Swiss Gambit as he started with a loss in the very first round to his compatriot GM Evgeny Sharapov. The only way to get to 9/10 after that is to win nine games in a row, and that's what Onischuk did.
So, what happened in that first round? Well, it looks like he premoved his 42nd move, expecting Black to move with his king:
In the 10th and final round, Onischuk showed some textbook rook endgame technique in a standard position with one extra passed pawn on the seventh rank. It's not winning if White also has a passed pawn on the h- or g-file, but it is when he can create it on the f-file.
Meanwhile, Nakamura drew two games and won eight, including the following game against Alireza Firouzja. The Iranian player did make it to the final eight this time.
The players who qualified for the knockout together with Nakamura, Firouzja, and Onischuk were GMs Boris Grachev, Kirill Alekseenko, Yuriy Kuzubov, and Mikhail Demidov and IM Praveen Balakrishnan.
September 1 Speed Chess Grand Prix | Swiss Final Standings (Top 20)
| Rk | Fed | Title | Username | Name | Score | SB |
| 1 | GM | @Onischuk_V | Vladimir Onischuk | 9 | 54 | |
| 2 | GM | @Guenplen | Boris Grachev | 8.5 | 58 | |
| 3 | GM | @BilodeauA | Kirill Alekseenko | 8.5 | 55.25 | |
| 4 | GM | @KuzubovYuriy | Yuriy Kuzubov | 8.5 | 51.25 | |
| 5 | GM | @Firouzja2003 | Alireza Firouzja | 8.5 | 51 | |
| 6 | GM | @Hikaru | Hikaru Nakamura | 8.5 | 49.75 | |
| 7 | GM | @kuli4ik | Mikhail Demidov | 8.5 | 47.75 | |
| 8 | IM | @praveenb2002 | Praveen Balakrishnan | 8.5 | 47.25 | |
| 9 | GM | @ArjunErigaisi2003 | Arjun Erigaisi | 8.5 | 46.25 | |
| 10 | GM | @Beca95 | Aleksandar Indjic | 8 | 56.5 | |
| 11 | IM | @wonderfultime | Tuan Minh Le | 8 | 50 | |
| 12 | GM | @vugarrasulov | Vugar Rasulov | 8 | 47.75 | |
| 13 | GM | @GM_Levan_Pantsulaia | Levan Pantsulaia | 8 | 47.5 | |
| 14 | GM | @GOGIEFF | Anton Korobov | 8 | 47.25 | |
| 15 | GM | @ChessWarrior7197 | Nodirbek Abdusattorov | 8 | 47 | |
| 16 | IM | @swimmerchess | Siva Mahadevan | 8 | 46 | |
| 17 | GM | @vladislavkovalev | Vladislav Kovalev | 8 | 45.5 | |
| 18 | GM | @youngKID | Karthikeyan Murali | 8 | 43.75 | |
| 19 | IM | @DanielDardha2005 | Daniel Dardha | 8 | 43.5 | |
| 20 | GM | @Oleksandr_Bortnyk | Oleksandr Bortnyk | 8 | 41.5 |
Onischuk also made it all the way to the final as he first beat Balakrishan and then another compatriot of his, GM Yuriy Kuzubov—the latter had beaten Firouzja in the quarterfinal. Nakamura eliminated Alekseenko and Grachev to reach the final.
Onischuk quickly lost the first game, but then managed to beat Nakamura on demand and in dominating style. Here's the single, decisive bullet game that followed where Onischuk's light-squared bishop got buried in the opening and never really recovered:
Nakamura won the $1,000 first prize and 12 GP points while Onischuk took second ($500 and eight GP points). Grachev and Kuzubov both won $200 and four GP points, while the losing quarterfinalists each earned $100 and two GP points.
WGM Elena Tomilova (@TomiLen) won the $100 prize for being the top-scoring female player.
Below are the current Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix standings. At the end of the season, the players with the four best scores will advance to the Speed Chess Championship to be hosted later this year.
Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix | Standings After September 1 (Top 20)
| # | Fed | Title | Name | Username | Swiss Points |
Bonus Points |
Overall Points |
| 1 | GM | Hikaru Nakamura | @Hikaru | 67.5 | 40 | 107.5 | |
| 2 | GM | Parham Maghsoodloo | @Parhamov | 67 | 22 | 89 | |
| 3 | GM | Haik Martirosyan | @Micki-taryan | 59.5 | 28 | 87.5 | |
| 4 | GM | Vladislav Artemiev | @Sibelephant | 42.5 | 36 | 78.5 | |
| 5 | GM | Vladislav Kovalev | @vladislavkovalev | 66 | 8 | 74 | |
| 6 | GM | Dmitry Andreikin | @2Vladimirovich90 | 57 | 14 | 71 | |
| 7 | GM | Grigoriy Oparin | @OparinGrigoriy | 50.5 | 20 | 70.5 | |
| 8 | GM | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | @LyonBeast | 41.5 | 28 | 69.5 | |
| 9 | GM | Alireza Firouzja | @Firouzja2003 | 56.5 | 12 | 68.5 | |
| 10 | GM | Maksim Chigaev | @Fandorine | 48.5 | 12 | 60.5 | |
| 11 | GM | Nordibek Abdusattorov | @ChessWarrior7197 | 50 | 10 | 60 | |
| 12 | GM | Sergey Karjakin | @SergeyKarjakin | 49.5 | 10 | 59.5 | |
| 13 | GM | Boris Grachev | @Guenplen | 47.5 | 12 | 59.5 | |
| 14 | IM | Tuan Minh Le | @wonderfultime | 50 | 6 | 56 | |
| 15 | GM | Alexander Grischuk | @Grischuk | 49.5 | 6 | 55.5 | |
| 16 | GM | Aleksandar Indjic | @Beca95 | 49.5 | 6 | 55.5 | |
| 17 | GM | Oleksandr Bortnyk | @Oleksandr_Bortnyk | 41 | 12 | 53 | |
| 18 | GM | Raunak Sadhwani | @RaunakSadhwani2005 | 47.5 | 4 | 51.5 | |
| 19 | GM | Vladimir Fedoseev | @Bigfish1995 | 33 | 14 | 47 | |
| 20 | GM | Peter Svidler | @PSvidler | 33.5 | 12 | 45.5 |
Games final eight
The Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix is presented by Gambit, where you can play classic games like Reversi, Backgammon, and Oh Ship with players from around the world.
More information about the Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix can be found here.
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!
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