SL Narayanan Wins Biggest Titled Tuesday Ever

The year 2019 started strongly with the biggest Titled Tuesday ever held on Chess.com. A field of 388 played, and the winner was GM Sunilduth Lyna Narayanan of India, who finished ahead of e.g. GMs Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So.

Since it's now possible to join the tournament after it starts, we had 28 "late joins" and the total of 388 participants was two more than the record 386 players we had in June 2018.

Narayanan took first place as the only participant to finish on nine points in the 10 rounds. He remained undefeated, with two draws and eight wins. Narayanan played in Titled Tuesday from Switzerland, where he was playing the Schachfestival chess tournament. 

Already on 4.5/5, Narayanan defeated one of America's top grandmasters. So probably expected his opponent to take an exchange, but instead an attack over the light squares became fatal:

And after another draw and two wins, Narayanan (already half a point ahead of the pack) was also too strong for Nakamura, in the final round. The Indian GM found a good formation against his opponent's setup with an early Nf3, b3 and e3. Out of the opening, Black's attack was tough to meet from the start.

Hikaru Nakamura. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.

Earlier in the tournament, Nakamura had played a nice game against the Armenian IM David Shahinyan. For anyone who fears the Botvinnik System (1.c4 with g3, d3 and e4) as Black, this is a well-known setup that works:

Tigran L. Petrosian, one of the players who tied for second place, plays Pirc/King's Indian setups with both colors. He nicely outplayed Daniel Naroditsky in a positional game:

Tigran L. Petrosian | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.

Naroditsky himself found a nice finish in his game with IM Vuk Djordjevic:

Petrosian was fortunate enough to profit from an oversight by Georg Meier in the final round:

Let's look at a game from both of the IMs who shared second place with Petrosian. For starters, here's the round nine game from Daniel Mieles Palau from Ecuador:

IM Kanan Garayev of Azerbaijan also won a game where opposite-colored bishops was the theme, in the same round:

January Titled Tuesday | Final Standings

Complete crosstable and games are available here.

Commentary was provided on Twitch.tv/Chess by IM Levy Rozman.

Narayanan (@Indianlad) took the first prize of $500. Places 2-4 were shared by Tigran L. Petrosian (@TigranLPetrosyan), Daniel Mieles Palau (@DanielMielesPalau) and Kanan Garayev (@KenanGarayev) who all won $266.67.

There was another tie for places 5-8 and each won $25: Florian Jenni (@2nd_life), Daniel Naroditsky (@DanielNaroditsky), Vasiliy Korchmar (@Korchmar_Vasiliy) and Alexey Potapov (@Alexey_Potapov).

GM Hikaru Nakamura ( @Hikaru) won this month's streamers' prize, 20 subs that were given to his audience. He'll be streaming much more this week!