After counting over 10,000 votes, Chess.com is pleased to announce the results of this year’s Chess.com Awards 2022! Our plebiscite is a chance to remember what happened in 2022, which was fantastic for chess. Our users also have the ability to reminisce about the best games, moves, players, creators, and other events that brought us the previous year.

A lot has happened in 2022. When it comes to live tournaments, we’ve seen some great performances, including: GM Hikaru Nakamura, who became the second official Fischer World Chess Champion. At the Chess Olympiad, young players presented themselves very well, m.in. GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov or GM Gukesh D. Additionally, GM Ian Nepomniachtchi also gave us a record result in the Candidates Tournament.

Online competitions have also brought us many unforgettable moments. The Chess.com Globe Championship set a new standard for hosting chess events – in these hybrid competitions, a portion of the games were played online and the endgames were played live. Equally exciting was the Champions Chess Tour series, in which the full pool, after a fierce battle with extremely powerful rivals, was won by GM Magnus Carlsen. At the end of the year, hundreds of thousands of fans could follow the next edition of the Speed ​​​​Chess Championship tournament, the final of which saw a match between Nakamura and Carlsen.

Our users played over 3.5 billion games on Chess.com last year, and that number doesn’t even include the approximately 1.5 billion games played against computer bots. We have also exceeded the number 100,000,000 users— if Chess.com were a separate country, we would be the 15th largest country in the world!

As you can see, the popularity of chess is growing faster and faster every year. And thanks to a community as great as ours, it will certainly continue to grow in the near future!

And now it’s time to finally present the winners of the 2022 Chess.com Awards.

Player of the Year: Hikaru Nakamura

The prize for the best fighter in 2022 was won, after a hard fight, by Nakamura – the winner of the second title in history Fischer World Chess Champion. The second place vote went to Carlsen, and the difference between him and the winner was only 11 votes! The title of world chess champion Fischer is not the only achievement of the American chess player last year. A genius player who until now had only “streamed” came back from his chess “retirement” and won the FIDE Grand Prix series, and also participated in the Candidates Tournament. Speed ​​Chess Championship 2022 Nakamura defeated none other than Carlsen.

1. Hikaru Nakamura
2. Magnus Carlsen
3. Nodirbek Abdusattorov

Creator of the year

Although the competition in this category was huge, the title of best creator was won this year by IM Levy Rozman[…]this is his second consecutive victory in our plebiscite. Rozman has indeed had an extremely successful year – his YouTube channel has maintained its position as the most popular. Rozman has also been featured in chess videos and articles, and was one of the Chess.com commentators for the Globe Championship.

1. Levy Rozman
2. Hikaru Nakamura
3. Kevin Bordi

party of the year

The party of the year was considered impressive victory GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda on GM Anish Giri. Not everyone manages to finally sacrifice a piece in the first match against a super-grandmaster and then end the duel victoriously anyway – the young Pole managed to do it.

1. Douda versus GiriMeltwater Champions Chess Tour
2. Carlsen vs. NepomniashchiSinquefield Cup
3. Alireza Firouzja against. NakamuraCandidates Tournament

Movement of the year

1. 28.Rg7+!! – Duda in the evening against Giri
2. 26.Nd7!! – Ivanchuk in a match against van Forest
3. 29.G:f6!! – Nakamura in the match against Espence

rising star

And which of the young talents caught your attention the most? This year’s rising star winner is a 17-year-old Indian grandmaster Praggnanandhaa R. Although Pragg is still very young, the past year has been very demanding for him – after beating Carlsen three times and competing in the Asian Continental Championships, the teenager still found time to sign a sponsorship deal with the one of the investment companies.

1. Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu
2. Gukesh Dommaraju
3. Arjun Erigaisi

Tournament Best Performance

Great chess commentators can take the experience of watching chess events to a whole new level – whether it’s analyzing positions for viewers, sharing their emotions related to the game in progress or occasionally shouting during the broadcast. In 2022, no one did better than GM Daniel Naroditskythis is why the award for best commentator of the year went to him.

1. Daniel Naroditsky
2. Levy Rozman
3. David Howel

Tournament of the year

There have been many fantastic tournaments throughout the year, both online and live. However, one tournament in particular caught the eye, which became the second most-watched tournament in chess history: Speed ​​Chess Championship 2022.

Article of the year

It’s no surprise that the most important article of 2022 was chosen as an article by Peter Doggers titled “Carlsen will not defend his world titleIt doesn’t happen every year that the current world champion and best chess player in the world voluntarily renounces his title. .

IT Party of the Year

Watching the best chess engines play chess is a unique experience. No other chess game is as beautiful – and sometimes even chaotic – as the duel of chess engines. This year, the prize in the category of the best video game of the year was awarded to Stockfishwho achieved an incredible tactical victory over the engine Leela Chess Zero. Stockfish devoted a lot of material to this game, thanks to which he defeated his silicon opponent after an extremely creative game, filled with ideas that no human mind could come up with.

1. stockfish vs. Lc0, TCEC Season 23 – Super Final
2. stockfish vs. Lc0, CCC 17 Blitz: Finals
3. stockfish vs. Lc0, CCC 17 Blitz: semi-finals

User of the Year

book of the year

There are many sources that can help us improve the game of chess, but one of the most effective methods of gaining knowledge is books. If your New Year’s resolutions include mastering your king game skills, you should read the Book of the Year 2022:Improve your chess calculation”by GM R. B.Ramesh.

1. Improve your chess calculation (“How to better count variants?”) – by RB Ramesh
2. The Unstoppable American (“American not Stop“) – author: Jan Timman
3. chess queens (“Chess Queens”)- by Jennifer Shahade

List of rewarded users