Sarana wins first 5+0 Titled Tuesday

Alexey Sarana won the first new-edition Titled Tuesday on September 2nd with a score of 9.5/11, as the only undefeated player in the tournament. chess.com had announced changes to the format of their flagship event last week, the most notable of which are that the time control would be changing from 3+1 to 5+0, and it will only be held once per week instead of twice. That led to the biggest criticism, which is that a single, fixed time slot would make it harder for players from all geographies to participate in the 11:00 a.m. ET event.

The event will also have relevance towards the Esports World Cup, for those players at the top.

Sarana’s victory came on tiebreak over Andrey Esipenko, who he played to an opposite colour bishop draw in the last round, and half a point ahead of several players including Magnus Carlsen, who he defeated in the 9th round to put himself on track to win.

Magnus made an appearance to stream his games live on Twitch, viewable on the maskenissen channel.