Maghsoodloo Beats Praggnanandhaa In Junior Speed Chess Championship
GM Parham Maghsoodloo will be the opponent for GM Haik Martirosyan in the quarterfinals of the Junior Speed Chess Championship sponsored by ChessKid. In their match on Saturday, Maghsoodloo eliminated the Indian youngster GM Praggnanandhaa R. 16-10.
As the pairings for this year's competition were based on recent Chess.com ratings instead of FIDE ratings, the SmarterChess predictions seem very reliable. In this case, the match was even closer than predicted, but the winner was never in doubt.
Maghsoodloo (@Parhamov) won the five-minute segment with a big margin: 7.5-1.5. Praggnanadhaa (@rpragchess) would need a major comeback and did win the three-minute segment 4.5-3.5, but that wasn't enough to make his opponent nervous. The Iranian GM won the bullet part 5-4.
An early blunder might have influenced Praggnanandhaa's play in the early phase of the match.
Game eight, still in the five-minute time control, saw some amazing tactics spotted by the commentators but not by the players:
A curious moment was the last three-minute game, with which Maghsoodloo lost that segment narrowly as he blundered into checkmate in a drawn endgame.
The move of the match perhaps is 27.d4!! in the penultimate game, beautifully using different pins in the position.
Praggnanandhaa earned $192 based on win percentage; Maghsoodloo won $500 for the victory plus $308 on percentage, totaling $808. He moves on to the next round, where he will play GM Haik Martirosyan.
Congrats to @PMaghsoodloo for reaching the quarterfinals of the Junior #SpeedChess Championship after beating @rpragchess! It seems that a bit of Iranian rap music in the background inspired him. 😀 🎶 pic.twitter.com/8OmPZsJF3e
— Chess.com (@chesscom) September 20, 2020
Asked what music he was listening to, Maghsoodloo said: "I was rapping some Iranian raps, as usual. When I play online, I like to listen to music and also sing with it. I think that this is not good for my real chess, but online it helps!"
Commentator GM Vidit Gujrathi: "I need that playlist!"
Praggnanandhaa: "I think I had a lot of winning positions in the five-minute segment, and he was putting a lot of pressure on the clock. It was not easy."
Maghsoodloo: "I think I'm just very resourceful in losing positions!"
The live broadcast of the match.
All games
The remaining matches in the round of 16:
- Sept. 20: Alexey Sarana vs. Andrey Esipenko at 12 p.m. Pacific / 21:00 Central Europe
- Sept. 21: Jeffery Xiong vs. Nodirbek Abdusattorov at 9 a.m. Pacific / 18:00 Central Europe
- Sept. 23: Anton Smirnov vs. Raunak Sadhwani at 9 a.m. Pacific / 18:00 Central Europe
The 2020 Chess.com Junior Speed Chess Championships is sponsored by ChessKid, the world's number-one site for kids to learn and play chess. Sixteen GMs younger than 21 years old play in a knockout format with 90 minutes of 5|1 blitz, 60 minutes of 3|1 blitz, and 30 minutes of 1|1 bullet chess. In this second edition, there's a total prize fund of $25,000 on the line. Find all information here.
See also:
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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