# A Grandmaster Just Joined Chess.com's Most Exclusive Two-Day Club

> GM Tuan Minh Le won both Titled Tuesday and 3 0 Thursday in the same week, becoming only the fifth player in history to complete chess.com's toughest online blitz double. Here's how he did it, game by game.

_By Akash Mitra · Aug 22, 2026_

# The Rarest Double in Online Chess

Imagine playing eleven fast games of chess on a Tuesday, then coming back two days later and doing it all over again — against some of the strongest players on the planet. Now imagine *winning both times*.

That's exactly what grandmaster Tuan Minh Le just did. And in the eight-year history of chess.com's biggest weekly online events, only four other players have ever managed the same feat.

## What Are Titled Tuesday and 3 0 Thursday?

If you're new to chess, here's the quick version. Every Tuesday, hundreds of titled players — grandmasters, international masters, and rising stars — log on for **Titled Tuesday**, an 11-round blitz tournament where every game moves fast and every mistake gets punished instantly. Two days later, the same crowd often returns for **3 0 Thursday**, three separate Swiss tournaments run back-to-back at an even quicker time control.

Winning either one is hard. Winning both in the *same week* is something else entirely.

## Le's Tuesday: Nine Wins in a Row

GM Tuan Minh Le won his first Titled Tuesday of the year on August 18, and the 12th of his career, after coming out ahead of GMs Parham Maghsoodloo and Arjun Erigaisi on tiebreaks with a score of 9.5/11. Le recovered from a first-round loss by ripping off nine consecutive wins thereafter, the first seven on the board and the last two by forcing his opponents out of time in equal positions.

That's a remarkable turnaround — losing your very first game, then not dropping another point for the rest of the tournament. Interestingly, the players most people expected to dominate had a rough week. The top three finishers at the recent Esports World Cup — GMs Magnus Carlsen, Denis Lazavik, and Hikaru Nakamura — all played and all suffered from an "Esports World Cup hangover," and only Nakamura would end up in the top 20.

The final round came down to fine margins. In the final round, despite some brief winning chances that could have locked up sole first place, Le settled for a draw by agreement — but Maghsoodloo won his own final game, and despite getting caught, Le's tiebreaks remained stronger than either Maghsoodloo or Arjun, who settled for the next two spots. A win decided not on the board in the very last game, but on the math behind it.

## Le's Thursday: A Rook Sacrifice and a Photo-Finish

Two days later, Le showed up again — and this time the story was even tighter. Minh Le had a strong start to the first tournament, winning four games before giving up a draw in round five. He responded by winning a spectacular sixth-round game where he sacrificed both rooks for a mating attack.

Giving up not one but *both* rooks and still forcing checkmate is the kind of move that makes other grandmasters stop scrolling and watch the replay.

The finish was just as dramatic as the middle. Two more wins brought Minh Le to 7.5/8, but draws in the final rounds allowed his rivals to catch up — in the end, Le edged them by just half a tiebreak point to take first place. Half a tiebreak point. That's how thin the margin was between winning the tournament and going home with nothing to show for a near-perfect score.

## Joining a Very Short List

By winning the first 3 0 Thursday tournament of the week on August 20, right after his Titled Tuesday win, Le became the fifth player to complete the Tuesday-Thursday double victory in the same week, joining the company of GMs Fabiano Caruana, Denis Lazavik, Arjun Erigaisi, and Jan-Krzysztof Duda.

Think about that company for a second. Caruana is a two-time World Championship challenger. Arjun and Lazavik are among the fastest-rising young stars in the game. Duda is a former World Cup runner-up. Now Le's name sits right alongside theirs — earned not in a single big event, but by grinding through two separate weekly battles, days apart, against a field that resets every time.

## The Rest of the Day Wasn't Quiet Either

Le wasn't the only story from that Thursday. Duda also had a successful day, winning the second tournament as the day's only clear winner, leading it from start to finish. His play was so sharp that his eighth-round game earned a nearly-perfect 99.4 accuracy score — a number serious players dream about but rarely see.

Meanwhile, in the third tournament, GM Aravindh Chithambaram was first among equals, edging out three other players on tiebreaks, including a beautiful queen sacrifice along the way to seal his own title.

Three tournaments, three different winners, three different styles — a rook sacrifice, a near-flawless attack, and a queen sacrifice. It was a good week to be a chess fan with a Twitch tab open.

## Why This Matters

It's easy to think of online blitz as just for fun — quick games, low stakes, nothing like the slow, serious battles of a world championship match. But weeks like this show the opposite. The fields in these events are stacked with grandmasters rated well above 3000 online, and surviving eleven rounds without cracking takes the same nerve, calculation, and stamina as any classical event — just compressed into a fraction of the time.

Tuan Minh Le didn't just win one tournament. He won two, on two different days, against two different fields, and became only the fifth player ever to do it. That's not luck. That's a very good week of chess.