Dejan Bojkov Chess Blog: Chess digest, Oct. 31–Nov. 4: Lazavik takes Almaty, Firouzja ends Nakamura's streak, Sindarov enters the title match 72 points clear

Denis Lazavik wins Almaty unbeaten while 14-year-old Mark Smirnov earns a first GM norm, Alireza Firouzja ends Hikaru Nakamura's Bullet Brawl run, and Javokhir Sindarov goes into the world title match 72 rating points and 22 places clear of Gukesh Dommaraju.

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Coverage window: after 10:45 Sofia time on October 31 through 10:45 on November 4, 2026.

Denis Lazavik won the KazChess Masters in Almaty without losing a game, and a 14-year-old left the same tournament with his first GM norm. Alireza Firouzja ended Hikaru Nakamura's Bullet Brawl run. The November rating list put Javokhir Sindarov 72 points and 22 places above the man he plays for the world title in three weeks. Chess.com also named the field for the Speed Chess Championship.

Lazavik wins Almaty, Smirnov earns his first GM norm

The KazChess Masters ran October 26 to November 3 in Almaty: ten players, nine rounds, 90 minutes for 40 moves plus 30, a 30-second increment from move one and no draw offers before move 30. 1

Five Kazakhs faced five grandmasters from abroad. The field averaged 2573 and an age of 21. 2

Daniil Dubov led with three rounds to play, on 4½/6, half a point clear of Denis Lazavik and Shamsiddin Vokhidov. 1

Round seven was where the lead first wobbled. Dubov reached a clearly better endgame against Sauat Nurgaliyev and could not convert it; Lazavik beat Alua Nurman with black to draw level on 5/7. 3

A day later Lazavik took the lead outright, beating Nurgaliyev with white while Dubov drew with Aram Hakobyan. Vokhidov stayed in the race by beating Nurman. 3

All three frontrunners had black in Tuesday's last round. Dubov drew Mahammad Muradli in 31 moves. Vokhidov lost to Nurgaliyev, the 16-year-old Kazakh IM who had come into the round without a win. 3

Lazavik needed only a draw. He held Hakobyan's pressure in a minor-piece endgame, and the two agreed a draw after 58 moves. 3

Lazavik is 19 and Belarusian, and he finished on 6½/9 with four wins and five draws. His previous classical title was the 2025 Abu Dhabi Masters; this year he reached the final of the Esports World Cup, where he lost to Magnus Carlsen. 3

A young man in a dark sweater holding a framed trophy with a gold medal and a city skyline model inside

Denis Lazavik with the trophy from the 2025 Abu Dhabi Masters, the classical tournament he won before Almaty. Photo: Aditya Sur Roy / ChessBase India, via ChessBase.

Mark Smirnov was the youngest and lowest-rated player in the field, at 14 and 2451. He lost his first-round game to Dubov, then scored four wins and three draws in his remaining eight games, losing only once more, to Vokhidov. 3

His wins over Edgar Mamedov in round seven and Denis Makhnev in round nine both came with black. The 5½/9 finish and a 2666 performance rating gave him his first GM norm, the first of the three the grandmaster title requires. 3

Smirnov won the world under-12 title in 2024. 3

Final standings after nine rounds. Players level on score are grouped, and ordered within a group by rating. 2

Player	Fed	Rating	Score
Denis Lazavik	BLR	2636	6½
Daniil Dubov	FID	2654	6
Shamsiddin Vokhidov	UZB	2649	5½
Mark Smirnov	KAZ	2451	5½
Aram Hakobyan	ARM	2638	4½
Denis Makhnev	KAZ	2581	4½
Edgar Mamedov	KAZ	2474	4½
Mahammad Muradli	AZE	2662	4
Sauat Nurgaliyev	KAZ	2526	3
Alua Nurman	KAZ	2460	1

Firouzja ends Nakamura's Bullet Brawl run

Bullet Brawl on October 31 drew 232 players, seven of them super-grandmasters. Carlsen was among them, logging in from Spain. 4

Nakamura won 14 of his first 15 games, beating Firouzja twice in that stretch, and led by 16 points with a quarter of the arena left. 4

Then he queued for a bullet game outside the arena by mistake and did not notice until the game was over. His lead was down to 13 points. 4

Firouzja scored 13.5/15 over that last quarter. He beat Nakamura in their final meeting, declining the usual 2...d5 in the Caro-Kann for 2...d6!? and an Old Indian set-up. 4

Firouzja finished on 170 points, four clear of Nakamura's 166. Ediz Gurel took third on 159 and Matthias Bluebaum fourth on 136; Melika Mohammadi won the best women's prize. 4

The prize money went $400 to Firouzja, $250 to Nakamura, $150 to Gurel and $100 each to Bluebaum and Mohammadi. 4

Nakamura had won the seven previous editions and 72 Bullet Brawls in all, 23 of them this year. He was chasing a 73rd here. 4

The win is Firouzja's third, which puts him level ninth on the event's all-time list. The next edition is Saturday, November 7. 4

Sindarov goes into the title match 72 points and 22 places clear

The November rating list is the last official measurement before the world title match in Cologny, outside Geneva, which begins on November 22 with the first classical game two days later. 5

Javokhir Sindarov is fourth in the world at 2782. Gukesh Dommaraju, the defending champion, is 26th at 2710. 5

Title matches have carried a 72-point gap before. Carlsen went into his matches against Nepomniachtchi, Karjakin and Anand with leads of 74, 81 and 95 points. 5

The ranking gap is new. No title match since the championship was unified in 2006 has been played across 22 places; the previous widest were 18 places in 2024, when Gukesh played Ding Liren, and 16 in 2012. 5

Gukesh is the lowest-ranked player to reach one of these matches in that period. The lower-rated player has won only twice: Anand against Veselin Topalov in 2010 and Ding against Nepomniachtchi in 2023. 5

Big leads have still left matches open. Carlsen's 81 points on Karjakin in 2016 ended in a playoff, and Gukesh needed the last classical game to beat Ding two years ago. 5

Behind them, Nihal Sarin climbed 11 points to 2720 and from 30th to 19th, a career best. His 5/6 and board-two gold at the European Club Cup in Budva came with a 2859 performance. 5

Hans Niemann dropped 20 points to 2697 and from 22nd to 32nd, out of the 2700s, after losing four games and winning one at the U.S. Championship. 5

Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus lost 12 points to 2719 and sits 21st, having been 15th live during the Club Cup. 5

The women's top ten stood unchanged. Alice Lee rose to 14th on 2474 and took over as the American number one; Carissa Yip fell 31 points to 2453 and 22nd. Rachael Li, the new U.S. champion, gained 50 points to 2430 and 31st, and Bodhana Sivanandan climbed to 39th on 2414. 5

In the FIDE Circuit, which decides two places in the next Candidates, Wesley So's U.S. title earned 17.76 points and left him within a couple of points of Sindarov's lead. Caruana moved up to third. 5

Speed Chess Championship XI names its field

Chess.com announced the eleventh Speed Chess Championship on November 3: 16 players, a $250,000 prize fund, and up to 150 Champions Chess Tour leaderboard points. 6

The season starts this month and ends with a live final at 180 Studios in London on February 5 to 7, 2027. 6

Carlsen and Nakamura have won five titles each and both return. The only players besides Carlsen to have beaten Nakamura in a Speed Chess match, Firouzja and Denis Lazavik, are in the field too. 6

Sindarov makes his debut. Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin, Yagiz Erdogmus, Caruana, So, Abdusattorov, Niemann, Dmitry Andreikin, Sina Movahed and Vladislav Artemiev fill out the line-up. 6

Each match is a knockout tie split into two blitz sections and one bullet section. The winner takes 150 Champions Chess Tour points toward one of the 12 Esports World Cup places that come through the tour. 6

Promotional artwork with three players in front of a teal background and the words Speed Chess Championship XI, November 16 2026 to February 7 2027

Chess.com's key art for Speed Chess Championship XI, which runs to the live finals in London on February 5-7, 2027. Image: Chess.com.

Budapest names its broadcast team, and Carlsen prepares with Abdusattorov

The Total Chess World Championship Tour pilot runs November 10 to 20 at the Anantara New York Palace Budapest Hotel, with 24 players and Carlsen among them. 7

A blitz Swiss sets the tiebreak rankings, a fast classical group stage follows at 45 minutes plus a 30-second increment, and knockout matches then combine all three formats, with wins in the longer games weighing more. 8

FIDE named the broadcast team on November 3. Anna Rudolf, Fiona Steil-Antoni, David Howell and Jovanka Houska will present and commentate, with Rudolf also reporting from the venue. 7

Levy Rozman, better known as GothamChess, will front a daily highlights show with player interviews, analysis and guests. 7

Carlsen spent the days before Budapest at his holiday home in Spain with Nodirbek Abdusattorov, David Howell and his longtime coach Peter Heine Nielsen. A post on his social accounts on October 31 showed the four of them and a video of the two top-ten players at blitz. 8

"Someone brought a chess board into this house," the caption read. 8

Rivals inside the top five rarely prepare together, and the two could meet in Budapest. Abdusattorov won the London Chess Classic in December, then Tata Steel and the Prague Masters this year. 8

Also this window

English Championship, Peterborough, October 24 to November 1. Gawain Maroroa Jones won the open unbeaten, with six wins and three draws for 7½/9, a point clear of Michael Adams, who was also unbeaten. It was his fourth English title, after first winning it jointly with Stephen Gordon in 2012; Adams has seven since 2007. Elmira Mirzoeva took the women's event on 7½/9, her second title after 2024, with Anusha Subramanian second on 6½. Both open and women's winners also won the blitz championship on the final day. 9
World Senior Championship, Vrnjačka Banja, from November 3. The championship has 385 players from 65 federations, among them 44 grandmasters and 8 women grandmasters. Four nine-round classical Swiss events run in the 50+ and 65+ age groups, open and women's, for a €50,000 prize fund and four titles in 11 days. 10
Bavarian Championship, Gmund am Tegernsee. The 548-player field has 50 players on 2/2 after two rounds, with top seed Frederik Svane and third seed Alexander Donchenko among them. Three top-ten seeds were held to draws by lower-rated opponents: Jaime Santos, Leonardo Costa and Peter Acs. 11

What to watch next

Date (Europe/Sofia)	Event and location	Checkpoint
November 7	Bullet Brawl, online	The first edition since Firouzja ended Nakamura's run of seven straight wins.
November 10–20	Total Chess World Championship Tour pilot, Budapest	24 players; the blitz Swiss opens the event and sets the tiebreaks. 7
November 16 – February 7	Speed Chess Championship XI	The season opens; the live finals are in London, February 5-7. 6
November 22 – December 13	World Championship match, Cologny, Geneva	Gukesh Dommaraju defends against Sindarov; the first classical game is November 24. 12
November 24 – December 7	XTX Markets London Chess Classic, London	Nodirbek Abdusattorov defends the Masters title he won in 2025. 13
December 26–30	World Rapid and Blitz Championships, Istanbul	Four titles; Carlsen defends both open championships. 14
December 27	FIDE Extraordinary General Assembly, online	Delegates meet at 14:30 CET; the agenda is due by November 27. 15