After getting third in the last Titled Arena GM Oleksander Bortnyk won the April Blitz Titled Arena - it‘s his third win of a TA! GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov came in second and the mysterious GM Grey_parrot took third place. Fourth was taken by GM Zhamsaran Tsydypov and fifth by GM Vahap Sanal.

Berserk was the key to victory for Oleksander Bortnyk in this Arena. He had a berserk rate of 100% and played 20 more games than second place. Second and third place went for a different approach. They berserked less but got long streaks with win rates of over 80%. Third placed GM Grey_parrot found his nemesis. While Grey_parrot only lost 5 games in the whole Arena, he lost 4 of them to GM Aravindh Chithambaram, who came in 6th.

https://youtu.be/FUsoY7a3i-g

This TA, like always, had a lot of quality streams. Most notably, GM Magnus Carlsen streamed the whole event. Without any advertisement beforehand he reached almost 12.000 viewers at peak. In accordance with his new Lichess name (DrGrekenstein) he also played different variations of the Greek opening in all games. Also not castling in the entire event! Still he reached 14th place with a performance of over 2900. Also streaming, but starting late in the Arena was GM Alireza Firouzja, reaching 11th place with a 100% berserk rate.

https://lichess.org/study/jJvJ4sXK/hnUv8DBF

The next Titled Arena will be on 17th April and will be two hours of Bullet Chess.