My Junior Speed Chess Championship Preview
In my opinion, junior tournaments are as entertaining as it gets and I love to watch young up and coming stars flourish on the world stage. Chess.com's Junior Speed Chess Championship is going to be a great event. It includes top Indian Juniors Gukesh and Raunak Sadhwani, as well as others, dueling it out over quick time controls.
The format of the tournament is an 8 players bracket, where each match consists of 2 5+1 games, 2 3+1 games, and 2 1+1 games.
The matchup for the 1st round look like this:
Gukesh vs. Ohanyan
Yoo vs. Pranav
Raunak vs. Samadov
Lazavik vs. Dardha
Favorites
Gukesh is the highest rated player over the board in this tournament and is a very strong blitz and bullet player as well, is most certainly one of the favorites. Christopher Yoo is also one of the favorites especially after last year where he made it to the second round before being ousted by Nihal Sarin. Another player with experience in this tournament is Raunak Sadhwani. Raunak lost in the first round last year, but his experience in this format could give him an edge against other less experienced players. In term of rating Raunak and Pranav are both rated above 3000 in blitz on chess.com but some players like Gukesh don't play as often as they do online. Overall however, Gukesh is still the likely favorite. His high level calculation and style of not taking huge risks make him the player to beat in this tournament.
Dark Horse Contender
While more popular GM's like Gukesh and Raunak might garner the most attention, Denis Lazavik will be a dangerous contender in this years tournament. Lazavik is the highest rated blitz player of the bunch on chess.com and he also has a very strong bullet rating as well. In addition to this, he also has experience in this tournament after his first round loss last year. While many might not know who Lazavik is, don't be surprised if he deals a couple of upsets.
My Predicted Bracket
Gukesh vs. Ohanyan
Yoo vs. Pranav
Raunak vs. Samadov
Lazavik vs. Dardha
Second Round
Gukesh vs. Yoo
Raunak vs. Lazavik
Finals
Gukesh vs. Lazavik
My prediction is that Lazavik will win this, though I think his matches against Gukesh and Raunak will be very close. I think that his skill and amount of practice in bullet he has done in the past week will really help him get an advantage in the match, especially as it comes down to the wire.
