So Ends Duda Fairy Tale, Reaches Speed Chess Final

After eliminating Sergey Karjakin and Alexander Grischuk, Jan-Krzysztof Duda couldn't score another upset in yesterday's Speed Chess semifinal. In fact, Wesley So was way too strong and won with a big 20-7 score.

At the start of the match, few would have predicted such a lopsided final score. The players were quite evenly matched, and things could have gone differently perhaps if Duda had grabbed a few more of his chances in that early stage.

The very first game was, in hindsight, quite typical. The Polish grandmaster reached a completely winning endgame, with a knight and five pawns versus a rook and one pawn, but suddenly allowed a draw that came out of nowhere.

Admittedly, So on his turn missed a win in game two, but then won game three. Game four was another example of Duda's misfortune.

"In the beginning I played very, very badly and well, I was in real shock when I didn’t win this Italian game two pawns up," he said afterward. "I was almost about to lose this game. I thought that when I would win some game the match would take a differente course but it wasn’t the case unfortunately."

After some more adventures and three more draws, So won game eight and took a two-point lead for the first time. Duda's Trompowsky wasn't very successful and he ended up in a lost position. What he didn't notice is that the evaluation jumped to 0.00 for one moment. Duda's frustration started to show as he continued playing until one move before the mate.

After the next game, the last in the five-minute portion, So's lead was back to just one point as he blundered terribly in a better position, forgetting that the b6-pawn defended the rook on c5 as well.

5+1 segment | Score

In the first three-minute game Duda got another huge chance, but this time he didn't notice. Commentator IM Danny Rensch said he was curious about the pawn endgame and that the news report should discuss it, and as it turns out there's a good reason to do just that:

The story might be somewhat monotonous, but in game 12 Duda again missed a great chance. He played  33...Qh8+ a bit too quickly, forgetting about 34.Qh2 where 33...Qxg3 would have won easily. Timetrouble was definitely a factor here.

After a draw in game 13 (the last draw in the match!) in game 14 Duda disconnected and lost. A few games and some research later, Chess.com decided that this hadn't been his fault and so this loss was removed from the scoreboard.

Meanwhile, Duda's suffering on the board continued with moments like this...

3+1 segment | Score

The bullet portion was a complete massacre, with nine wins for So and just one for Duda. It was Murphy's Law all over for the Polish fighter. Caissa didn't even award him an honorable last win, which he definitely deserved:

1+1 segment | Score

So won So $5,222.22 and advanced to the finals, whereas Duda earned $777.78. So's opponent in the final is either Hikaru Nakamura or Levon Aronian, who play the other semifinal today at 10 a.m. Pacific (7 p.m. Central Europe).

Asked which opponent he would prefer, So replied "Levon!" with a big smile. "Nothing personal against him. I’ll probably be the underdog in both matches but Hikaru is kind of the king of online blitz. My score against Hikaru online has been really horrible so I don’t really want to know. I am very glad to win the match today."

"Everything was wrong for me today," said Duda. "Wesley of course played very good; he was very resourceful."

In many games, Duda got in time trouble. "I played too slowly definitely. It just wasn’t my day. In some moments I wanted to play good. Time management was also a factor of course. But even if I had more time it would be difficult because Wesley played just much better than me."

"Coming to the match I didn’t think I was the favourite," said So. "Jan-Krzystof has improved a lot recently and also he beat Sergey [Karjakin] and Alexander Grischuk. I didn’t know what to expect."