5-Time Winner Ray Robson Storms Into 2026 Puzzle Championship Finals

5-Time Winner Ray Robson Storms Into 2026 Puzzle Championship Finals Five-time Puzzles Champion GM Ray Robson was first to qualify for the eight-player Knockout Finals of the 2026 Chess.com Puzzles Championship , and posted the day's best score of 62. He was joined by GMs Pranav Venkatesh , Jeffery Xiong , and Mitrabha Guha , IMs Yoseph Theolifus Taher , Anthony Atanasov , and Grayson Rorrer , and FM James Chirilov . The 2025 Chess.com Puzzles Championship was a thriller. FM Dimitrios Ladopoulos , a four-time runner-up, missed out on tiebreaks in the final round, as did crowd favorites GMs Faustino Oro and Oleksandr Bortnyk , who scored one point less. The Knockout is on Friday, January 16, starting at 1 p.m. ET / 19:00 CET / 11:30 p.m. IST. Knockout Bracket Since it was launched in 2020, one player, Robson, has dominated the Chess.com Puzzles Championship. After five titles in a row, however, 14-year-old GM Andy Woodward snatched the crown last year, despite Robson fighting his way back from the Losers bracket to force a Grand Final reset. Alas, this year Woodward isn't taking part as the event overlapped with the opening ceremony in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands, where he's playing in the Tata Steel Chess Challengers . The young American starts with Black against GM Bibisara Assaubayeva . As we'll see, that wouldn't stop everyone, however, since 12-year-old Oro did choose tactics over the opening ceremony. This is now the second year that the Puzzles Championship will launch a full year of action with the Chess.com Community Championships. All players can participate, and there's something new to try out each month. Anyone could join the first stage of the two-day Puzzles Championship, but only if they could score 50 points in a five-minute Puzzle Rush . The participants submitted Twitch or YouTube clips showing themselves completing that task in order to qualify. Thursday featured five rounds of Puzzle Rush Royale. In each round, players attempted to score the best they could in three-minute Puzzle Rush, with a 30-minute timer ticking down for each round. The goal of the first round was to finish in the top-20, although a minor mishap ultimately meant the top-21 would do! Qualifiers After Round 1 Kacper Drozdowski ) also qualified, with a score of 51. Robson warmed up with what would turn out to be the day's single best score, 62, but some notable players missed out, including six-time World Chess Solving Champion GM Kacper Piorun . Alexandra Kosteniuk , was one of the players who didn't make it into the top-20. For the final four rounds the formula was simple, but brutal. In each round the bottom-three players were eliminated, while only the top-two qualified for Friday's Knockout. Round 2 Final Standings This time Robson again posted the best score, and booked his spot in the Finals. He was joined by 17-year-old U.S. IM Atanasov (AA175), who left Xiong and Pranav with reason to feel they were unlucky after posting the...

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