2026 Bullet Chess Championship Day 1: Firouzja, Nihal, Tang, Arjun To Play In Winners Semifinals

Nobody has been eliminated yet, but we will get our first and second slates of eliminations on Thursday. The players on their last lives are GM Haowen Xue, IM Yoseph Theolifus Taher, GM Sam Sevian, GM Christopher Yoo, GM Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, GM Matthias Bluebaum, GM Denis Lazavik, GM David Paravyan, GM Ediz Gurel, GM Parham Maghsoodloo, GM Oleksandr Bortnyk, and GM Tuan Minh Le.

Losers Bracket

Format & Who’s Playing

The tournament is a double-elimination bracket with 16 players and a time control of one minute for each side with no increment. Similar to the SCC format, matches consist of a 30-minute countdown clock for all rounds, except for the Winners Semifinals, Winners Final, and Grand Final, which are each 45 minutes long. Players must have a two-point lead when the timer runs out to win the match; otherwise, they play tiebreaks until one player reaches a two-point lead.

The following eight players were invited. The favorite is Firouzja, who won in 2021, 2024, and 2025, and returns to defend his title this year, without having to face three-time champion GM Hikaru Nakamura.

There were eight play-ins on Monday, and the winner of each qualified for the main event. The additional eight players are shown below, three of whom have crossed the 2700-rating mark before (Bluebaum, Maghsoodloo, and Erdogmus).

The top prize is $10,000, though even someone who loses all of their matches will still go home with over $1,000. The total prize fund is $50,000.

Round of 16: Maghsoodloo & Arjun Advance After Tiebreaks 

The round of 16 was split into two segments, with four matches taking place at a time. In the first half of matches, Firouzja, Gurel, and Nihal won by comfortable margins of six or more points, but Sevian vs. Maghsoodloo went all the way to tiebreaks. 

Sevian—who had made it to the Winners Semifinals in 2025, before he was beaten by GM Daniel Naroditsky—had the better start to the match. And when he won the following rook endgame in game 13, he shot out to a two-point lead. Though Sevian outplayed Maghsoodloo on the board at some point, his dexterity with premoves was the most important factor in the end.

From there, however, Maghsoodloo fought his way back into the match and, by the end of the 30 minutes, the Iranian was up 9.5-8.5. Since players have to win by a two-point margin, the match went into tiebreaks, where the first player to reach a two-point lead advances.

Sevian won game one to tie the match, but Maghsoodloo completed the comeback by winning the last two games. In the penultimate game, Sevian—moving too quickly—hung his bishop two times before it was finally captured.

Maghsoodloo then won the match with an irresistible double attack on the rook and the base of White’s pawn chain.

In the second half of matches, again three invited players moved on while just one of them dropped down to the Losers Bracket. The scores were closer, as Bortnyk beat Erdogmus 10-6, Tang beat Bluebaum 11-7, and Le (who qualified via a play-in) beat Lazavik (who had been invited) 9-7. 

The closest match, and the only one to go to tiebreaks, was Arjun vs. Paravyan. Arjun led by two points, but the final game started in the final seconds. The Indian GM only needed to hold a draw, but a tragic mouse slip allowed Paravyan to survive into tiebreaks.

But Paravyan wasn’t able to deliver another win after that. Arjun, with Black, won the first game of tiebreaks to establish the two-point lead and win the match. He ended it with the following checkmate, even in the endgame:

By this point, the following pairings had been decided for the next stage: Firouzja vs. Gurel, Maghsoodloo vs. Nihal, Bortnyk vs. Tang, and Le vs. Arjun.

Winners Quarterfinals: Bullet Beasts Prevail

In the first half of matches, Firouzja and Nihal, respectively, defeated Gurel and Maghsoodloo to advance to the Winners Semifinals.

Nihal’s victory was hardly in doubt once he won the first six games in a row (!), a shocking performance against a fellow 2700+ grandmaster. Game three featured a pretty and unusual checkmate in the middle of the board (unless Black resigns, he has to play 42…Rc5, giving away the rook).

Maghsoodloo picked up six wins total in the match, but didn’t manage to overcome the four-point gap in the end.

The Firouzja vs. Gurel match was closer, and the Turkish grandmaster led at the start of it. Gurel took a 3-2 lead when Firouzja lost on time in the following game. It didn’t matter that Gurel had just blundered an entire rook, of course.

From there, however, the French number-one staged a convincing comeback. He took a two-point lead in the following clip, where Gurel showed just how hard he is to beat in this time control—as he came milliseconds from drawing the game with a knight and queen down.

Nevertheless, Gurel didn’t quite come back in the second half, and Firouzja advanced to the Winners Semifinals with a 10-7 final score. The last game had an entertaining finish as Gurel set up a stalemate that ended up working! He saved the game but not the match.

In the second half of matches, we saw Tang and Arjun come out on top. We didn’t see a tiebreak this time around as Tang won by a margin of four points, 10.5-6.5, and Arjun by a margin of three, 12-9.

The start of the match between Tang and Bortnyk pretty much decided it, as the “penguin GM” started with six wins out of the first eight games (one draw, one loss). Game six was a nice win by Tang, where he avoided the difficulty of a rook and bishop vs. rook endgame by finding a simpler way: checkmate.

Two games later, Bortnyk’s tilt was on full display as Tang won one of the quickest games of the day. Resignation came as early as move 15, with Black’s queen facing a sentence of death by fork.

Bortnyk brought the gap down to four points, but it was hardly enough to put the match result in question. 

Arjun’s match was close in the first half, as the players reached a tied 6-6 score, but then the Indian grandmaster took off. While Le is a bullet specialist, Arjun’s having crossed the 2800-threshold can only help in any form of chess. The penultimate game showed off Arjun’s strength in attacking, as after 22.Rg4? Black was much, much faster in the race to checkmate the enemy king.

By the end of day two, half the players (six) in the Losers Bracket will be eliminated. Let us know in the comments: who’s your pick to win this year’s Bullet Chess Championship?

The 2026 Bullet Chess Championship takes place on Chess.com from June 25-28, after Play-ins on June 23. It is the strongest online bullet tournament and determines who is the fastest chess player in the world. The time control is 1+0. The total prize fund is $50,000.

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