Against all odds, Vietnamese GM Tuan Minh Le produced one of the most unexpected comebacks in Bullet Brawl after closing a 20-point gap in 16 minutes and edging out GM Hikaru Nakamura on tiebreaks on Saturday. In the final 16 minutes, Le added 27 points to his score and finished on 159, joining Nakamura who accrued just seven points in the same timeframe.
Le earned the $400 first prize for the first time since 2024, Nakamura will receive $250 for second, while GMs Oleksandr Bortnyk and Arjun Erigaisi’s third- and fourth-place prizes, respectively, were also decided by tiebreaks. FM Anastasia Avramidou took the $100 best women’s prize once again.
The next edition of Bullet Brawl will begin on Saturday, August 1, at 12 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. CET.
Standings
| Rank | Fed | Title | Username | Name | Rating | Score | Longest Streak |
| 1 | GM | wonderfultime | Tuan Minh Le | 3278 | 159 | 9 | |
| 2 | GM | Hikaru | Hikaru Nakamura | 3333 | 159 | 8 | |
| 3 | GM | Oleksandr_Bortnyk | Oleksandr Bortnyk | 3296 | 152 | 8 | |
| 4 | GM | GHANDEEVAM2003 | Arjun Erigaisi | 3278 | 152 | 8 | |
| 5 | GM | gurelediz | Ediz Gürel | 3332 | 139 | 7 | |
| 6 | GM | Konavets | Sam Sevian | 3236 | 137 | 17 | |
| 7 | IM | MITerryble | Renato Terry | 3214 | 134 | 9 | |
| 8 | GM | Bardiya06 | Bardiya Daneshvar | 3176 | 131 | 14 | |
| 9 | FM | 1800_strength | Dachey Lin | 2981 | 112 | 4 | |
| 10 | IM | johnathan113 | Johnathan Bakalchuk | 3026 | 110 | 5 | |
| 11 | FM | TrimitziosP7 | Petros Trimitzios | 2978 | 103 | 4 | |
| 12 | FM | EddieMarsalla | Ivan Vihor Krsnik Cohar | 2901 | 102 | 5 | |
| 13 | GM | Sankalp_Gupta2003 | Sankalp Gupta | 2955 | 100 | 7 | |
| 14 | FM | rubix-time2 | Virgile Breuil | 2946 | 100 | 6 | |
| 15 | FM | allblacksGOAT | Levi Kalani Alexander Fogo Esquivel | 2763 | 97 | 7 | |
| 16 | IM | IM_Alex_Ivanov | Alex Ivanov | 2862 | 97 | 5 | |
| 17 | IM | kingnb | Nitish Belurkar | 2932 | 96 | 4 | |
| 18 | IM | saikrishnaReturns | Sai Krishna G V | 2824 | 93 | 6 | |
| 19 | IM | Herzog2012 | Mark Smirnov | 2950 | 92 | 7 | |
| 20 | FM | anasta10 | Anastasia Avramidou | 2851 | 90 | 6 |
(Full final standings here.)
For much of Saturday’s Bullet Brawl, it appeared Nakamura was cruising toward his 63rd career title and 14th of the year. After posting an eight-game winning streak to kick off the arena, Nakamura shadowed the fast-starting GM Sam Sevian and eventually passed him just before the halfway point.
Pinpoint precision and tactical awareness, as exemplified in a game with Dutch FM Gachatur Kazarjan, helped Nakamura win some of his early games in fewer than 20 moves and amass 91 points in the first hour.
Meanwhile, Le was producing sacrifice-riddled art against many of his opponents and keeping himself in contention. Against WIM Vesal Hamedi Nia, he kept his eyes on the prize with devastating back-to-back brilliant moves, 21…Qg3!! and 22…Rxf3!!.
Soon after, Le uncorked one of the most picturesque moves of the day, a penetrative sacrifice that led to decisive material loss for Italian FM Danilo Brozzi.
Yet by the time the final 16 minutes arrived, it was Nakamura who held a commanding 20-point lead over the field, and Le seemed destined for a silver medal finish.
Despite this, Nakamura had a premonition of sorts 10 minutes earlier that teased the notion of a comeback when he stated on Kick: “I’m going to make this way too interesting. I’m playing bad game after bad game.”
In his last nine games, Nakamura scored a lackluster 2/9 (partly attributable to him playing 3200+ rated GMs in all of these games) and opened the door for what would become one of the most unlikely comebacks in Bullet Brawl history.
A simultaneous seven-game streak for Le allowed him to catch Nakamura and when the arena clock expired, coincidentally aborting a game between the pair at the 12-move mark, they had the exact same score, making Le’s last-minute miniatures all the more important in retrospect.
Tiebreak-wise, Le was declared the winner thanks to having the longest winning streak (nine vs. eight), and this win made him only the second person to finish ahead of Nakamura in an edition of Bullet Brawl in 2026.
All-Time Leaderboard
| Player | All-Time Wins | 2026 Wins | 2025 Wins | 2024 Wins | 2023 Wins |
| GM Hikaru Nakamura | 62 | 13 | 15 | 19 | 15 |
| GM Daniel Naroditsky | 32 | N/A | 8 | 14 | 10 |
| GM Oleksandr Bortnyk | 17 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 3 |
| GM Andrew Tang | 15 | 1 | 10 | 4 | 0 |
| GM Ediz Gurel | 10 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 0 |
| GM Arjun Erigaisi | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GM Jose Martinez | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| IM Renato Terry | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GM Yagiz Erdogmus | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| GM Nihal Sarin | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| GM Tuan Minh Le | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| GM Jeffery Xiong | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| GM Sam Sevian | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| GM Alireza Firouzja | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| GM Andy Woodward | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GM Matthias Bluebaum | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| IM Yoseph Taher | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| IM Reza Mahdavi | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| GM Javokhir Sindarov | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
How to review games?
The games from this week’s Bullet Brawl can be found here.
Bullet Brawl is an exciting arena featuring Chess.com’s top bullet specialists. It takes place weekly on Saturdays. The format is a two-hour arena with a 1+0 time control; the prize fund is $1,000. Like Titled Tuesday and Arena Kings, Bullet Brawl often features top GMs, including Hikaru Nakamura, Andrew Tang, Tuan Minh Le, and many more!
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