# Hikaru Nakamura Just Hit a Rating No Human Has Ever Reached — Then Lost the Trophy Anyway

> Hikaru Nakamura became the first player in Chess.com history to cross a 3500 blitz rating — then, one round from winning the tournament that made it happen, he blundered it away. Here's the wild 48 hours that followed, plus the story of an amateur grandpa

_By Akash Mitra · Oct 10, 2026_

Imagine running the fastest mile anyone has ever run — and then tripping at the finish line of the very next race. That's roughly what happened to Hikaru Nakamura this week, and it's the kind of story that makes chess feel less like a cold, calculating game and more like real life: brilliant one moment, humbling the next.

### A Number Nobody Had Ever Seen

On October 5, Nakamura became the first player in Chess.com's history to reach a 3500 blitz rating. The next day, while streaming live from a tournament in Sithonia, Greece, he pushed it even higher. A day after becoming the first 3500-rated Chess.com Blitz player in site history, GM Hikaru Nakamura upped his record to 3503 while streaming Titled Tuesday live from Sithonia, Greece, on October 6.

To put that in perspective: ratings are a measure of how consistently a player beats others. A number like 3503 in blitz (fast chess, a few minutes per side) had simply never existed before. Nakamura himself didn't expect it to last. He told Chess.com journalist Tarjei Svensen that "Unless I'm only going to skip [Titled Tuesday and 3 0 Thursday] every week, there's no way even to keep my rating where it is... I view this as very much a one-time thing."

He even put a ceiling on how high it could realistically go. Asked about the theoretical maximum rating the site could ever produce, Nakamura placed it around 3550, an opinion mirrored by what he told Svensen before the event on whether 3600 was possible: "I am basically handicapped unless I were to stop streaming or playing Titled Tuesday, which I won't do for obvious reasons."

### Then Came the Twist

Here's where the story gets good. Setting a historic rating wasn't Nakamura's only goal that day — he also wanted to win the tournament itself, the weekly "Titled Tuesday" blitz event that gathers dozens of grandmasters from around the world.

For most of the day, it looked like he would. He fought through the field, and by the second-to-last round he was tied for the lead after beating GM Alexey Sarana out of a theoretically drawn opening that Sarana either didn't know or remember, or chose not to pursue.

But in the final round, with the tournament title on the line, Nakamura was paired against GM Vladislav Artemiev — and it unraveled fast. Both games went down to the wire, but that situation ultimately favored Artemiev in his game with Nakamura, who made an unnatural and incorrect capture that turned a modest advantage into equality. Moments later, Artemiev then punished another wrong Nakamura move and soon coaxed resignation.

Just like that, the man who had rewritten the record books was watching someone else lift the trophy. Grischuk and Sarana matched Artemiev on 9.5/11, but placed second and third on tiebreaks. Nakamura fell to ninth place, still among the paid positions but a far cry from where he wanted to, and where with one round left he seemed almost destined to, end up.

For Artemiev, it was a redemption story of his own — a win worth celebrating in its own right. The Titled Tuesday win for Artemiev was his first since he won three out of four from February 16 to March 9 back in 2021.

It's a perfect reminder of something every chess player eventually learns: ratings measure your past, not your next move. Even the best player to ever touch a mouse can misclick his way out of a trophy.

### Also This Week: A Grandpa vs. a Grandmaster

While Nakamura was busy rewriting history, a much quieter but equally fascinating story was brewing on the other side of the chess world — one about an amateur player willing to risk public humiliation for a shot at something memorable.

Meet Josh Smith, a 49-year-old businessman from Arizona who plays online under the name "Bullet Grandpa." Josh Smith, an amateur player with a US Chess rating in the 1800s, is set to play GM Daniil Dubov in a 100-game bullet match with up to $20,000 on the line. The catch makes it genuinely dramatic: Dubov must win every single game to collect the full amount. The 49-year-old Arizona businessman needs just one draw or win to cut Dubov's payout to $10,000. The match is set for November 7, with each player having just one minute per game with no increment.

Dubov is no ordinary opponent — he's a former world rapid chess champion, ranked fifth among the world's highest-rated blitz players. Yet even he isn't predicting a clean sweep. In his own interview, he joked about the stakes, saying "It takes a lot of talent to lose 100 games in a row."

Smith isn't playing to win the match outright — he knows the odds. His goal is simply survival with dignity, built on decades of obsession with the fastest format in chess: he says he's completely addicted to bullet chess, having played an estimated more than 250,000 games in the format over the last 30 years. His philosophy for the match is refreshingly simple: "Bullet is not finding the best move. It's about finding good moves fast."

Two very different stories, one shared truth: chess rewards nerve as much as it rewards talent — whether you're chasing a historic rating or just trying not to lose 100 games in a row on purpose.

### The Takeaway

Numbers like 3503 remind us how far the best players have pushed the game. But what makes chess endlessly watchable isn't the number on the leaderboard — it's the fact that, even at the very top, one bad capture can undo it all in seconds. That's not a flaw in the game. That's the whole point.