Arena Kings Season 5 Leaderboard

The updated standings and leaderboard information for Arena Kings season five are below. 

You can read the season five announcement here for complete details.

Season Recap: 

Beginning on September 16, Arena Kings was back for Season five, with all the regulars and many newcomers ready to fight for Arena supremacy. As was no surprise, Hikaru Nakamura took down the first event with an impressive 94 points! Not to be outdone, Alireza Firouzja and Daniel Naroditsky were ready to go too, taking down the next event with first- and second-place finishes ahead of Nakamura. 

Of course, Nakamura wasn't having it and followed up with four consecutive wins to take an early lead on the season leaderboard. His OTB playing schedule then took him away for a few weeks, giving Firouzja and Naroditsky a chance to make up some ground while IM Renato Terry Lujan's steady performances kept him in the race. 

In mid-October, we hosted the first Knockout events of the season, where we saw breakthrough performances from GM Vugar Rasulov, GM Narayanan S.L. and the soon-to-be GM Raunak Sadhwani. With their strong finishes, all three players established themselves among the top competitors of Season five, positions they maintained until the end of the season.

Week nine featured Fischer Random chess with Narayanan and Nakamura showing their strength with nice wins, closely followed by Firouzja and newcomer GM Fidel Corrales. We also saw some strong performances from Sadhwani and Lujan. With Nakamura's lead still significant, he was again away for OTB competitions for a few weeks.

This gave Firouzja his chance to leap into first place in the standings with clutch arena victories in four of the last six events, thus securing himself a bye directly into the grand finals. Let's not forget IM Lujan's (un)timely defeat in the first round of the last Knockout event, where Firouzja's 65-point lead was reduced to just 15 points going into the Finals week.

Finals week: The top 30 players were invited to a closed Arena Kings event on the Monday. With 12 GMs in attendance and just nine spots available for the finals, competition was fierce and six GMs made it through along with three talented IMs, including the Chess.com famous IM Minh Le (@wonderfultime). 

The Finals round-robin saw the favorites Nakamura and Firouzja pull ahead of the pack early. The competition for 3rd-4th places was tight and featured many lead changes. Eventually, the ever-steady Georg Meier and the speedy IM Lujan earned their way into the Finals Knockout. Their nights were soon over as the early favorites prevailed and sent them packing. The final match of the year was tighter than the score indicated as Nakamura took an early lead and rode it all the way to his third Arena Kings Finals victory.

Overall, Nakamura's win wasn't enough to take home the season prize as Firouzja and Lujan's late-season runs gave them too big of a lead on the leaderboard. Congratulations to our top three!

Final Standings

Week 3, Top Clip: GM Alireza Firouzja ($50 in gifted Twitch subs)

Week 3, Staff Prize: GM Krikor Mekhitarian ($50 in gifted Twitch subs)

Week 3, Friday 3|0:

• 1st place: GM Hikaru Nakamura ($125)
• 2nd place: GM Daniel Naroditsky ($75)
• 3rd place: Mahdi Gholami Orimi ($50)
• U2200: Anis Achour ($50)
• U1800: Poulpinator ($25)

Week 3, Monday 3|0:

• 1st place: GM Hikaru Nakamura ($125)
• 2nd place: GM Pavel Anisimov ($75)
• 3rd place: Mahdi Gholami Orimi ($50)
• U2200: Anis Achour ($50)
• U1800: Logan Chancellor ($25)

Week 2, Top Clip: IM Eric Rosen ($50 in gifted Twitch subs)

Week 2, Staff Prize: GM JJ Ali Marandi ($50 in gifted Twitch subs)

Week 2, Friday 3|0:

• 1st place: GM Hikaru Nakamura ($125)
• 2nd place: GM Daniel Naroditsky ($75)
• 3rd place: Masoom Nazari ($50)
• U2200: Alex Lalau ($50)
• U1800: Masoom Nazari ($25)

Week 2, Monday 3|0:

• 1st place: GM Hikaru Nakamura ($125)
• 2nd place: GM Eric Hansen ($75)
• 3rd place: GM Daniel Naroditsky ($50)
• U2200: NM Henrique Paiva ($50)
• U1800: Charlie Docherty ($25)

Week 1, Top Clip: NM Kevin Bordi ($50 in gifted Twitch subs)

Week 1, Staff Prize: FM Jose Herrera ($50 in gifted Twitch subs)

Week 1, Friday 3|0:

• 1st place: GM Alireza Firouzja ($125)
• 2nd place: GM Daniel Naroditsky ($75)
• 3rd place: GM Hikaru Nakamura ($50)
• U2200: Hallvard Haug Flatebo ($50)
• U1800: Kaykobad Khan ($25)

Week 1, Monday 3|0:

• 1st place: GM Hikaru Nakamura ($125)
• 2nd place: IM Renato Terry Lujan ($75)
• 3rd place: Caleb Kircher ($50)
• U2200: Caleb Kircher ($50)
• U1800: John Michael ($25)

For more information about Arena Kings season five, please visit this article for the rules, format, prizes and everything else you need to know.