Nakamura just won his 18th Bullet Brawl of the year, taking top honors for the second straight week on September 19. That gives him 67 total victories in the tournament's history. If you've been paying attention to online chess this year, you already know what's happening. Nakamura is running away with bullet.

This isn't a surprise to anyone who watches him play. Nakamura has always been a speed chess demon. His reflexes and pattern recognition in positions that resolve in seconds separate him from nearly everyone else at the board. In traditional tournaments, he plays standard chess. Online, in formats where most humans start panicking at the clock, he thrives.

The Bullet Brawl format forces players to make decisions almost instantly. There's no time for calculation. You rely on intuition, experience, and pure tactical sharpness. Those are Nakamura's strengths. He reads positions faster than the competition can blink. His king safety judgments, which could go wrong in classical chess, work out perfectly when everyone else is equally rushed. The margin for error shrinks for everyone, which means the player with the best instincts wins.

Back-to-back titles matter because consistency beats luck. One win could be chance. Two straight wins prove you're the player everyone else is chasing. Nakamura clearly isn't slowing down. Eighteen wins this calendar year is a pace that suggests he's on track to set new records in this tournament before the year ends.

What makes this interesting for the broader chess world is what it tells us about online chess dominance. The players who kill it in Bullet Brawl and similar events often have a different skill set than candidates for the world championship. Nakamura proved years ago that he can play elite classical chess. But his heart seems to belong to the speed game. He gets to play dozens of games per week, solve positions in real-time, and compete in a format where his style of chess wins consistently.

The next Bullet Brawl will tell us whether Nakamura can make it three in a row. At his current form, don't bet against him. He's found his format and he's executing at a level that leaves everyone else fighting for second place.