The biggest tournament on Chess.com - My 1st Round

Hello everyone!

I'm Artem, this is my first blog on Chess.com, and in it I will tell you about the biggest tournament on the site and how the first round in it turned out for me.

First, a little bit about the tournament itself:
The tournament - Chess.com Daily Chess Championship - is held every year on Chess.com and each time it breaks records for participants: in 2023 the event attracted 35,000 chess players, in 2024 there were 65,000 incredible participants, and even though the record is not broken in 2025, 24,760 players sounds solid (that's more than the capacity of Madison Square Garden, for example). 

As for the tournament regulations, everything is simple:

• daily chess format,
• 1 day for a move,
• 12 chess players in one group,
• 22 simultaneous games,
• only one player advances to the next round.

Well, it's time to talk about my games of the first round. For convenience, I'll skip all the games (except for one) that were won on time. Even with this format, flagging is possible, players could forget about a game, or simply not show up. We can only thank our opponents for such behavior. I'll go from bottom to top of the table, so the quality of the games will increase and the tension will grow. Well, let's get started.

Game 1: Dangerous_king420 0 - 1 lib_rl. I'm not going to lie that the game was difficult, I clearly had an advantage in strength and understanding of the game. Let's not talk about seeding and opponent, we all started somewhere.

Game 2: lib_rl 1 - 0 TopGod073. This is the only game that has run out of time but will be featured on this blog. Why? Because it has an interesting opening trap! Remember it and don't get caught!

Game 3: McNair25 0 - 1 lib_rl. Interesting game. At some point I lost the advantage, but I got back into the game in time.

Game 4: lib_rl 1 - 0 McNair25. The game was in a much more attacking style than the previous ones. At some point Black had some sort of advantage, but a more precise game and a couple of decisive mistakes played in favor of White.

Game 5: lib_rl 1 - 0 StephenMfene. The most beautiful game from a tactical point of view. Interesting queen trap (sorry for spoilers) and unexpected computer verdict.

Game 6: StephenMfene 0 - 1 lib_rl. Quite a simple game, which, to be honest, does not need any comments, just a confident victory and a move of the opponent, which was a "brainlag" (the opponent himself wrote so in the chat)

Games 7 and 8 will be short, but quite demonstrative. The first one - from a tactical point of view, the second - from a strategic point of view.

Game 7:  lib_rl 1 - 0 tloemmli. It's all about tactics.

Game 8: tloemmli 0 - 1 lib_rl. Also a small game, but the decisive edge here is strategic.

Game 9:  lib_rl ½ - ½ melvtc. The second most difficult game for me. Although from the outside it looks like we traded everything quickly and easily, there were more nuances to the position than I would have liked. Accuracy of play on both sides 98+!

Game 10: melvtc ½ - ½ lib_rl. The last game I cover on this blog, and the most difficult in terms of scoring. Arguably, my most beautiful game from Round 1. Accuracy of play on both sides is also 98+!

If you like moves and ideas from my games, you can vote for them here and here (don't forget to log in to the Chess.com server in Discord).

Well, that was the end of the first round for me. The result: I shared first place in my group, which means that I made it to the second round! Let's see what I can show in it, but I will definitely try to go further!

I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I have a Youtube channel, where chess videos are released every other day, and twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) you can see me on Twitch! I'll be glad to see you there!

Thanks for your attention everyone, hugs to all!