Saturday
Dec162017
Chess.com's 2017 Speed Chess Championship: The Finalists are Set
Saturday, December 16, 2017 at 3:51PM
The second semi-final of Chess.com's Speed Chess Championship is over, and we now know who will face Magnus Carlsen in the final, set for January 3 at 1 p.m. ET. It was a close match, and for those who didn't see it live but want to watch the replay (go to twitch.tv/chess and look up the Nakamura-Karjakin match) without any spoilers I'll put the recap in the comments section.
Reader Comments (1)
Hikaru Nakamura won a narrow match, winning each segment by only a single game: 6-5 in the 5'+2", 5-4 in the 3'+2", and most surprisingly of all, just 5.5-4.5 in the 1'+1". Most remarkably of all, Sergey Karjakin won the first two decisive games in the bullet section to equalize the match score, but Nakamura recovered to win them back. (He later won a third, but that was due to Karjakin losing on time trying desperately to make something happen in a drawn position when running out of time in the match.) Both sides missed opportunities, of course - that will almost always be the close in a blitz and bullet match - but Karjakin missed more opportunities than his opponent. The match could easily have gone the other way, so in retrospect Karjakin's #2 seed in the event, behind Carlsen's #1 but ahead of Nakamura's #3, wasn't crazy at all. But the bottom line is that Nakamura took better advantage of his opportunities, and we'll be treated to the classic final most fans wanted to see.