The event kicked off, as usual, with some surprises. After just over the first hour of play, the top six places in the area were taken by untitled players, with Le in seventh and Nakamura in eighth.

As almost two thousand people played for the coveted top eight spots, streamers were highlighted on the broadcast. Andrew Horne’s karaoke-and-chess approach is quite familiar to regular spectators by now:

As Canty featured several other streams on the Chess.com broadcast, fans were able to enjoy players’ thoughts in real-time. In at least one instance, the difficulty of interacting with the chat while playing surfaced as we saw blunders in the fast time-control without increment. 

Finishing as the number-one streamer in the arena, Nakamura won 21 games with zero losses and seven draws. His quick calculation and smooth ability to narrate make converting advantages, even against grandmasters, look easy as pie. Most people could imagine themselves struggling to win the following game, for example.

The knockout portion started with the titled players having a heyday. Despite there being a clear difference in ratings between the two players, Le played a nice attacking game, starting with a daring knight sacrifice. 

The most memorable part of today’s knockout, however, has to be the two moments Nakamura underpromoted four pawns to knights and demonstrated checkmates that chess fans almost never get to see. 

Only a few minutes later, Nakamura did something similar with the black pieces. One must really wonder if Nakamura devotes any time to practicing these unusual piece configurations or if he just does it on the fly.

Ultimately, the final match went down between Nakamura and Martinez. The first two games were drawn with the latter giving up some opportunities to squeeze for a win. With that being said, their second game saw a nice, new opening idea from the Peruvian GM in 7.b4, a move championed by GM Jorden van Foreest, the highest-level encounter in the line being as recent as November 2021 in the FIDE Chess.com Grand Swiss. 

Nakamura, however, hit back hard and won games three and four, not having to play the fifth game to decide the match. Their last game pretty much summarized the character of their head-to-head battle: Nakamura showed greater patience and ability to squeeze while playing quickly while his opponent was not as comfortable in “shuffling with purpose,” as one might say.

The tournament winner summed it up best: “He panicked. That comes back to one of the psychological problems that Jospem has, which is that he can’t just sit there.”

Standings, Results, Prizes

Nakamura will take home $500, Martinez $350, with Le and Kumar $200 each, and places 5-8 earning $100 each (pending confirmation of fair play). Below you can see the full standings of the knockout:

 Arena Kings Season 9 | Week 1 | Final Knockout Standings