Speed Chess Championship: So defeats Duda

by André Schulz
11/20/2020 – In the first third of the quarterfinal Speed Chess Championship match between Wesley So and Jan-Krzysztof Duda, the young Polish player kept his own in the 5+1 blitz games, and in bullet he was even slightly better. But this was not enough because So dominated Duda in the 3+1 blitz games, which helped So to win the match 16-10 and to qualify for the semifinals. | Picture: Chess.com

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Speed Chess Championship, Quarterfinal: Wesley So vs Jan-Krzysztof Duda

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.

Opening package: 1.b3 and Black Secrets in the Modern Italian

Wesley So published two new opening DVDs: 1.b3, the so called Nimzo-Larsen-Attack, for White and his black secrets in the modern Italian. Get them in a package and save money!

Live replay of the match

Commentary by GM Robert Hess and GM Daniel Naroditsky

The bracket

Games of the match

 

All games of the Speed Chess Championship

 

Translation from German: Johannes Fischer

Links

Official site...


André Schulz started working for ChessBase in 1991 and is an editor of ChessBase News.

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