Junior Speed Chess Championship: Nihal Beats Checa On Eve Of FIDE World Cup

After just arriving in Sochi, Russia, for the FIDE World Cup, GM Nihal Sarin beat GM Nicholas Checa in the 2021 Junior Speed Chess Championship presented by ChessKid. Playing from his hotel, the Indian prodigy won in all three time controls.

The next match in the championship is GM Jeffery Xiong vs. IM Denis Lazavik on Sunday, July 11, at 6 a.m. Pacific 15:00 Central Europe.

The live broadcast of the match.

It's one of the perks of online competitions: you can play them from anywhere as long as your internet connection is good enough. Nihal (@NihalSarin on Chess.com), who had just won two strong open tournaments in a row in Serbia from where he had flown to Sochi for the FIDE World Cup, played his match with Checa (@SPEEDSKATER) upon arrival. And Nihal played it well.

Landed in Sochi some hours back. The internet looked scary slow but it held up in the end luckily. Started with a win over Checa in Jr. #SpeedChess! Got to catch some sleep before the start of World Cup. #Akshayakalpa

— Nihal Sarin (@NihalSarin) July 10, 2021

This Junior Speed Chess match started with a devastating 8.5-0.5 win for Nihal in the 5|1 segment. Some wins were very convincing, such as the second game:

Actually Checa wasn't playing that bad but often erred tactically. In the third game, he did fine until the following moment:

Nihal, on his turn, didn't seem to be missing a single tactic. The one in game four seemed to come out of the clear blue sky:

Game 12 was Checa's first win in the match, one that he played well from start to finish:

Nihal won the 3|1 and 1|1 segments as well, albeit with more decent scores for Checa: 5-3 and 7-4. The following game was a heartbreaker for Checa:

"In the five-minute portion, I got a good lead," said Nihal. "Nicolas was playing really well but just got unlucky in some scrambles."

Noting that many games in the match saw the Carlsbad pawn structure, Checa said: "I was very unfortunate that whenever I created some weaknesses in his position, I either couldn't convert on that side or his counterattack would be faster. He handled the structures really well, especially in time trouble."

Checa earned $133.93 based on win percentage; Nihal won $500 for the victory plus $366.07 on percentage for a total of $866.07. In the quarterfinal, Nihal will play GM Amin Tabatabaei.

All games

The Chess.com 2021 Junior Speed Chess Championship is an online tournament 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:

• Junior Speed Chess Championship: Yoo Upsets Niemann
• Junior Speed Chess Championship: Martirosyan Too Strong For Keymer
• Junior Speed Chess Championship: Tabatabaei Knocks Out Smirnov
• Junior Speed Chess: Record Comeback Maghsoodloo vs. Praggnanandhaa
• Junior Speed Chess Championship: Erigaisi Beats Shevchenko
• Sadhwani Beats Pultinevicius As Junior Speed Chess Championship Gets Underway
• Junior Speed Chess Championship Main Event Starts Thursday