In the first match of the quarterfinals of the Chess.com Speed Chess Championship Wesley So faced Jan-Krzysztof Duda. In the round of the last 16, Duda had eliminated Vice World Champion Fabiano Caruana, not least to his skills in bullet blitz, and against So Duda again showed how strong he is on the very short distance by winning the bullet portion of the match 5-4. But that was not enough to make up for the deficit he suffered in the 3+1 section of the match.
The first part of the match, in which 5+1 blitz games were played, ended with a 4-4 tie. A particularly interesting encounter in this section was game 3:
But in the 3+1 section So clearly dominated the young Polish Grandmaster.
In the 3+1 part of the match Duda drew games three and four but lost all of the remaining seven games and was trailing 5-12 when the bullet games started. In the bullet games Duda was narrowly ahead but this was not enough to save the match: in the end So won 16-10 and qualified for the semifinals.
Commentary by GM Robert Hess and GM Daniel Naroditsky
Translation from German: Johannes Fischer
