In a month full of surprises and controversy in the world of chess, yet another bombshell failed to occur when National Master John Chernoff (ZugAddict on lichess.org) was at no point a significant factor in yesterday's Titled Arena, finishing 141st out of 366 participants. When asked by absolutely no one to explain his unremarkable performance, Mr. Chernoff mumbled something about his mouse and bullet chess being an undignified activity to base a serious chess tournament on and left to turn on the bathtub faucet for his cat, "Bear".

With the field left wide open by the completely expected series of losses by NM Chernoff, two actual Grandmasters vied for first - Oleksandr Bortnyk ("Night-King96") and Daniel Naroditsky ("RebeccaHarris"), both managing to outpace their most famous rival, World #4 Alireza Firouzja ("alireza2003") after Firouzja stumbled near the end of the tournament with four successive losses. Narodisky's performance was arguably the most impressive of all, as he played only about an hour of the two hour long event and beserked an astonishing 56% of his games. Here in puzzle form is one of Naroditsky's wins against the tournament winner:

https://lichess.org/study/qgfmWWPm/HjdD8Ol1#48

In all fairness to the obviousness of that last "puzzle", it should be noted that profound combinations are not the most common feature of bullet games. The most common feature of bullet games are things like this:

https://lichess.org/study/qgfmWWPm/dhoLndxU#110

Finally, lest we consider GM Bortnyk only a strategic bullet genius, here's an attractive finish to one of his other games:

https://lichess.org/study/qgfmWWPm/JIgYjJEJ#40

After this victory, Night-King96 rattled off seven more to finally surge ahead of the competition and win the event. When pressed for comments afterwards, GM Bortnyk said nothing because I just messaged him a second ago and he's probably sleeping or something.

The next Titled Arena will be on November 5th.

- Zug

EDIT: Oleksandr Bortnyk writes back! His succinct summary: "always hard to play , too many good players , last 15 minutes have been stressful". Oleksandr also has just provided an exclusive insight into his favorite music to listen to while playing in these tournaments: "disco music , or deephouse , but when I am losing to many games or can't win 2-3 games in a row , then Show Must Go On". Many thanks and congratulations once more to the October lichess.org Titled Arena Champion, Grandmaster Bortnyk!