GM Nihal Sarin won the Lichess Bullet Titled Arena on Saturday, his second overall Titled Arena victory. With so many promising Indian juniors it can be hard to remember that Nihal is at the top of the “next generation,” and with Anand still sitting at #1 it could be said that there is more than one generation in front of him. The 17-year-old Sarin is currently the highest rated Indian under the age of 25 and #5 overall, although the 23-year-old S.L Narayanan is only 20 points behind. India has 16 players Sarin’s age or younger with a rating above 2400 so a challenge to his place could come from various directions. 

Among various other streams the official Lichess stream featured bullet commentary specialist IM Alex Astaneh. It’s very difficult to find something coherent to say in the 2 or 3 second windows of inactivity that you are occasionally given during bullet games, and Alex impressively goes well beyond simple coherency and is able to say something both coherent AND interesting! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUdvTWk41o

Check out our Lichess puzzle pack for some tricky puzzles that come from the games in the event.

https://lichess.org/study/NNxBRzkQ/siT48fPQ

The next Titled Arena will be with chess960 and take place October 2.