GM Benjamin Bok won Freestyle Friday on March 20, becoming the 25th different player to win the event. He also became the fifth different winner in the first five weeks of the Freestyle Friday Championship. Bok’s 9.5 points out of 11 were enough to win the tournament outright ahead of second-place GM Sina Movahed and third-place GM Conrad Holt, who also didn’t need tiebreaks to find the podium.
Won today’s @chesscom Freestyle Friday! Good warm-up for a bigger event this weekend… pic.twitter.com/yB2tI29SyJ
— Benjamin Bok (@GMBenjaminBok) March 20, 2026
Five players made it to the first break on a perfect 4/4, but only one made it to 5/5: IM Renato Terry. Terry’s first defense of his 100% score was also his last, as he made the rare castling blunder, dropping an exchange against Movahed. Joining Movahed were Bok with a win over GM S Rohith Krishna and GM Parham Maghsoodloo after defeating last week’s winner, GM Pranav Venkatesh.
In round six, Maghsoodloo faced Movahed in an all-Iranian game while Terry tried to redeem himself against Bok. Maghsoodloo and Bok, both playing White, won easily to reach 6.5/7; Bok took longer but in a somewhat more convincing fashion. GM Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son, after a long win against GM Nodirbek Yakubboev, was in sole third on six points, despite having lost back in round two.
With Maghsoodloo and Bok having drawn each other, round eight instead saw the matchups Bok-Nguyen and Maghsoodloo-GM Pranesh M, who was one of five players on 5.5/7. Maghsoodloo defeated Pranesh fairly early on with back-to-back brilliant moves on turns 15 and 16.
Meanwhile, Bok looked headed for a draw against Nguyen until the Vietnamese player, in time trouble, lost two pawns and got his king stuck in the middle of the board to boot. Only GM Ian Nepomniachtchi, who defeated Holt, was even one point behind entering the second break.
Coming out of the break, Bok played Nepomniachtchi while Maghsoodloo faced Terry. It appeared that both leaders would again win, but Maghsoodloo stumbled and lost. Bok, however, would obtain and convert a winning rook ending, taking the sole tournament lead.
Maghsoodloo was still able to have second place all to himself despite now trailing Bok by a point. To start protecting his lead, Bok took Black against Movahed while Maghsoodloo faced GM Faustino Oro, one of five players on 7/9. Movahed played almost flawlessly for the first 30 moves and still had two minutes when Bok was under 10 seconds. But just as Bok started to fight back, his time got him, and the tournament winner remained unpredictable.
Bok soon caught a break, however, with Maghsoodloo hanging a rook against Oro. Bok thus retained the tournament lead entering the last round, with Movahed, Oro, and Terry just behind him. (Terry, and Bok for that matter, are each older than Movahed and Oro combined. In case you wanted to know that.)
Oro would be the one in Bok’s path to the gold, in one of the shortest-named matchups you can have. Terry and Movahed, having played back in the sixth, were split up, with Terry facing Holt and Movahed getting Nepomniachtchi. Bok-Oro was the first of the three games to end, and with it effectively came the end of the tournament as well, as Bok faced little trouble in clinching.
Movahed took down Nepomniachtchi to take second place himself, and Holt defeated Terry for sole third.
With eight points, Terry managed to retain fourth place on tiebreaks over several players, including GM Oleksandr Bortnyk, who found himself leaving Freestyle Friday cashless for the first time in weeks. Bortnyk—who has exactly one placement at each spot in the top five the last five weeks—still leads the Championship Standings by a significant margin.
IM Mai Narva became the first player besides GMs Anna Muzychuk and Alexandra Kosteniuk to win the women’s prize since the Championship series began, doing so with an impressive 11th-place finish to move into third in the women’s standings.
March 20 Freestyle Friday | Final Standings (Top 20)
| Rank | Seed | Fed | Title | Username | Name | Rating | Score | 1st Tiebreak |
| 1 | 7 | GM | @GMBenjaminBok | Benjamin Bok | 2745 | 9.5 | 70.5 | |
| 2 | 4 | GM | @Sina-Movahed | Sina Movahed | 2784 | 9 | 67.5 | |
| 3 | 15 | GM | @dretch | Conrad Holt | 2655 | 8.5 | 63.5 | |
| 4 | 9 | IM | @MITerryble | Renato Terry | 2703 | 8 | 76 | |
| 5 | 2 | GM | @Oleksandr_Bortnyk | Oleksandr Bortnyk | 2770 | 8 | 69 | |
| 6 | 21 | IM | @FaustinoOro | Faustino Oro | 2614 | 8 | 68.5 | |
| 7 | 5 | GM | @vi_pranav | Pranav V | 2753 | 8 | 66.5 | |
| 8 | 26 | GM | @WhiteKnight2612 | Rohith Krishna | 2589 | 8 | 66 | |
| 9 | 3 | GM | @lachesisQ | Ian Nepomniachtchi | 2758 | 7.5 | 75 | |
| 10 | 12 | GM | @Parhamov | Parham Maghsoodloo | 2695 | 7.5 | 74.5 | |
| 11 | 32 | IM | @bulletteemo | Mai Narva | 2513 | 7.5 | 61 | |
| 12 | 86 | FM | @ColinFederer | Colin Federer | 2271 | 7.5 | 54 | |
| 13 | 73 | CM | @beyoglu20 | Ali Batuhan Biyiksiz | 2467 | 7.5 | 50 | |
| 14 | 17 | GM | @crescentmoon2411 | Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son | 2624 | 7 | 67.5 | |
| 15 | 10 | GM | @aquarium76 | Nodirbek Yakubboev | 2667 | 7 | 66.5 | |
| 16 | 22 | GM | @ENajer77 | Evgeniy Najer | 2582 | 7 | 66 | |
| 17 | 19 | GM | @Vaathi_Coming | Aravindh Chithambaram | 2610 | 7 | 65 | |
| 18 | 20 | FM | @Turboplombir | Sergey Sklokin | 2601 | 7 | 64.5 | |
| 19 | 39 | GM | @Aygehovit1992 | Nikita Matinian | 2516 | 7 | 64 | |
| 20 | 37 | CM | @Germanovs_Georgijs | Georgijs Germanovs | 2494 | 7 | 60 | |
| 21 | 45 | CM | @neymardasilvasantos_11 | Alper Tezcan | 2428 | 7 | 55 | |
| 22 | 8 | GM | @superchess02 | Iniyan P | 2681 | 7 | 51.5 | |
| 23 | 42 | FM | @Nicki2013 | Nikolay Kleimenov | 2456 | 7 | 48.5 | |
| 24 | 83 | CM | @FischerBobbyJames | Andras Ilko-Toth | 2291 | 7 | 46.5 | |
| 25 | 34 | IM | @Gianmarco_es | Gianmarco Leiva | 2482 | 6.5 | 65 |
(Full final standings.)
Prizes: Bok $400, Movahed $250, Holt $150, Terry $100, Narva $100.
Freestyle Friday is Chess.com’s weekly tournament dedicated to Freestyle Chess for titled players. The tournament begins at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time/17:00 Central European/20:30 Indian Standard Time.