Junior Speed Chess Championship: Tabatabaei Knocks Out Smirnov
GM Amin Tabatabaei narrowly defeated GM Anton Smirnov in an exciting match on Tuesday in the Junior Speed Chess Championship presented by ChessKid. Tabatabaei is the second Iranian player to move on to the quarterfinals after GM Parham Maghsoodloo defeated GM Praggnanandhaa R. yesterday.
The next match in the championship is GM Haik Martirosyan vs. GM Vincent Keymer on Wednesday, July 7 at 5 a.m. Pacific / 14:00 Central Europe.
The live broadcast of the match.
The fourth match in the round of 16 was the closest so far, which made it all the more exciting. As the players were trading wins back and forth early on, it was Smirnov of Australia (@antonsmirnov on Chess.com) who won the 5|1 segment 5-4.
The 3|1 segment saw a 4-4 tie but Iran's Tabatabaei (@amintabatabaei) then quickly turned the small deficit into a lead as he started the bullet segment with three straight wins. After the next game was drawn, the Iranian player won two more bullet games and was suddenly up 13.5-9.5. That was too much to make up for Smirnov, who did finish with 2.5/3 at the very end.
The match saw only five draws in 26 games but let's look at one of them because of the epic finale. This was the fourth 5|1 game:
The very last game of the match, when everything was already decided, saw a funny finish actually, with both players completely forgetting that the g2-square wasn't actually available for the black queen:
Smirnov earned $230.77 based on win percentage; Tabatabaei won $500 for the victory plus $269.23 on percentage, totaling $769.23. He moves on to the quarterfinals, where he will play the winner of the match GM Nihal Sarin vs. GM Nicolas Checa for which the date and time are to be announced soon.
All games
The Chess.com 2021 Junior Speed Chess Championship is an online competition for top junior players. The qualifiers for the event were held June 7-21, while the main event runs July 1-August 8. Players battle for their shares of a total prize fund of $35,000 and a spot in the Speed Chess Championship later this year. More info here; live games here.
Previous reports:
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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