Over the past few weeks, 56-year-old Grandmaster Vasyl Ivanchuk quietly went 27 games without a loss across three international events — Reykjavik, San Vicente, and Menorca. That’s three tournaments, three time zones, and zero defeats. He beat 2600-rated players. He drew teenage prodigies. He gained enough ELO to return to the FIDE Top 100 for the first time in years. And almost no one noticed.

“Ivanchuk undefeated across 3 tournaments, and y’all are still watching Gotham explain the Queen’s Gambit.” — @deadbishop

The games weren’t streamed. There were no post-match interviews, no memes, no live reactions. Most chess media didn’t cover it at all.

So we have to ask: Is this what a miracle looks like when no one’s watching?

Here are the facts:

Ivanchuk’s rating is now 2656. He jumped 27 points in April.
In San Vicente, he scored 8/9 in a rapid tournament and defeated Jaime Santos Latasa (2666) and Daniil Yuffa (2600).
In Menorca, he held off Edgar Mella, one of Spain’s fastest-climbing 18-year-olds.
He played across two formats (classical and rapid) and traveled several thousand kilometers in under three weeks.
He is, based on FIDE’s May 2025 list, outperforming a number of full-time professionals nearly half his age.

So what exactly is going on here?

Is Ivanchuk “back”?

Define “back.” He never fully disappeared — he’s been playing sporadically for years, just not in the kind of events that get clipped and captioned. But this streak is different. It wasn’t built on second-tier opposition, and it wasn’t a one-off. He’s now winning consistently against legit grandmasters.

Can he contend for anything?

Here’s where it gets trickier. The World Championship system isn’t built for one-man hot streaks. Ivanchuk has never been known for consistency, and the Candidates — the only way to get to the title — demands exactly that. He came close once, in 2013. Since then, the format has only grown more cutthroat.

Or is this something else?

Maybe what we’re watching isn’t a comeback, but a glimpse of what a chess career looks like when it’s detached from media cycles and commercial visibility. No Twitch. No sponsorship narrative. Just results.

And maybe that’s the real story: what happens when someone performs at a world-class level outside the spotlight. Would this have happened if he had a YouTube channel? Would we care more?

For now, Ivanchuk keeps playing. His next event is in Slovakia. No one’s covering it. No one’s flying in. But if the past month is any indication, we probably should be.