Sam Sevian Beats Amin Tabatabaei In Junior Speed Chess Championship
GM Sam Sevian is the third player to qualify for the quarterfinals of the Junior Speed Chess Championship sponsored by ChessKid. In a match on Sunday between two 19-year-olds, the American grandmaster beat GM Amin Tabatabaei 15.5-9.5.
For the third time in succession, we can speak of a more or less correct match prediction by SmarterChess where the number of points for the Iranian player was spot on while Sevian was expected to score a few more.
Sevian (@Konavets) won the five-minute segment 5-3 but tied 4-4 with Tabatabaei (@amintabatabaei) in the three-minute games. A two-point deficit was not a disaster for the Iranian player, but Sevian turned out to be the better bullet player as well: 6.5-2.5.
Already in the five-minute segment, some crazy things happened, and Tabatabaei definitely could have at least tied this part 4-4. For example, he turned a won endgame into a lost one in game four:
Sevian scored 5-3 in the eighth and final five-minute game deep in the endgame, where he made the Move of the Day according to GM Vidit Gujrathi:
All games
Tabatabaei earned $190 based on win percentage; Sevian won $500 for the victory plus $310 on percentage, totaling $810. He moves on to the next round, where he will play the winner of the match GM Alexey Sarana vs. GM Andrey Esipenko that is on September 20.
"I thought I would be better in the faster time controls before I came into today, but I played really well in the five-minute," said Sevian. "I realized during the time scrambles in the five-minute he was kind of outplaying me, so I needed to speed up for the bullet especially. In the three-minute he put a lot of pressure on me in almost every game."
Tabatabaei: "I think I was really close. I was under pressure from the first game because I lost the first game, so all the match I was down. In the bullet section, I had two winning positions. After I lost both games, I got completely tilted. I think it was a close match before I messed up those opportunities in the bullet.
"I'm very happy with my performance. OK, it could have gone better but still, also he played very well so he absolutely deserved it."
The live broadcast of the match.
Remaining matches in the round of 16:
- Sept. 14: Haik Martirosyan vs. Vincent Keymer at 9 a.m. Pacific / 18:00 Central Europe
- Sept. 19: Parham Maghsoodloo vs. Praggnanandhaa R. at 9 a.m. Pacific / 18:00 Central Europe
- Sept. 20: Alexey Sarana vs. Andrey Esipenko at 9 a.m. Pacific / 18:00 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.
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