Naroditsky Wins Tournament Of The Accused Ahead Of Organizer Nakamura

GM Daniel Naroditsky on Monday won the Tournament of the Accused, an event organized by runner-up GM Hikaru Nakamura and sponsored by streaming platform Kick.com. Several of the participants had been "accused": they were players whose recent results in online play had been dubbed "interesting."

GM Jose Martinez, Nakamura, and Naroditsky were the three seeded players who would join the event after the initial phase: a nine-round Swiss with 3+0 games. That tournament started with 24 participants (among them Martinez, who decided to play that one as well and scored 4.5/9).

GMs Benjamin Bok and Alexander Donchenko shared first with 6.5/9, while three more players qualified: IM Anthony Atanasov, GM Federico Perez, and IM Kacper Drozdowski. Three players who finished on equal points with Drozdowski failed to make it on tiebreaks.

Swiss Final Standings (Top 8)

The three seeded and five qualified players then competed in three separate round-robin tournaments, all seven rounds, but each with a slightly different time control: first 3+2, then 3+1, and then 3+0. Interestingly, during that last tournament, the players were allowed to observe live eval bars (those games were unrated). Below are the results; click on the images for a bigger version.

3+2 Final Standings	3+1 Final Standings	3+0 Final Standings

The winner was determined by a combined score in the three tournaments. In the first, Naroditsky finished equal first with Nakamura, then he came second behind Nakamura, and then sole first. Interestingly, in the 3+0 event with eval bars available, the two highest-rated players in classical chess finished at the bottom of the table. Donchenko, who had beaten GM Fabiano Caruana in St. Louis two days earlier, finished last in the overall final standings.

Overall Final Standings

Also notable was that Naroditsky actually defeated Nakamura in all three games. Their 3+1 game was a crushing victory in just 23 moves:

"This is gonna be very interesting; I have no idea what's gonna happen," Nakamura said before starting what he called the "clown fiesta" segment of 3+0 with eval bars next to the board while playing. "I don't have a strategy."

And indeed, even the Titled Tuesday king himself could not predict how awful he would do in that last tournament, where he scored just 2.5/7. He was probably too fixated on those eval bars, trying to solve -0.5 or +0.5 differences, and he would go down in positions he regularly saves in other events.

The first game, against Drozdowski, was a case in point:

Already after the second round, in which Nakamura lost to tournament winner Naroditsky, he concluded that he was "looking at the bar too much" and that it was more of a distraction than a help. Naroditsky did a much better job playing with the extra support:

3+0 is really a different kind of chess, especially with the extra information available. Would the normally very solid Donchenko lose so swiftly against Martinez otherwise? A powerful game from the Peruvian GM nonetheless.

Dutchman Bok commented to Chess.com about the tournament: "Big thanks to Hikaru, his team, and Kick for making this event happen. Playing chess with eval bars added a whole new dynamic to the game. You could see the impact it had on the players—everyone would pause the moment the eval bar swung, often helping them to find the best move.

"A great example of this was my game against Hikaru. After 19...h6, the move 20.Nh4 and launching an attack already seemed appealing, but seeing the eval bar jump confirmed my instincts and gave me even more confidence to go for it. It also felt good to make a move and watch the eval bar stay steady, knowing you just made the right move!"

The Tournament of the Accused took place on Monday, December 9, 2024, on Chess.com. You can find the games here. The total prize fund, provided by Kick.com, was $8,500. If a player streamed on Kick they would be eligible for 100 percent of whatever prize they earned. If they did not stream on Kick and won a prize, they would receive 75 percent of said prize. If they streamed elsewhere, they would not receive a prize.