Banter Blitz 2020 Final, Day 1
Monday, September 21, 2020 at 6:55PM
Dennis Monokroussos in 2020 Banter Blitz Series Final

We've had what, one day off? The glut of high-level online chess continues, albeit mostly for the super-elite. (Mere 2600 plebes can keep eking out their far less exalted living for the time being, before they're replaced in the food chain by a bunch of 13-14-year-olds.) Chess24's Banter Blitz Series Final started today and continues through Sunday as a 16-player knockout event. The first two knockout matches took place today (Monday), with Le Quang Liem winning the last three games to defeat Teimour Radjabov 6-4, while Wesley So won more quickly against Sam Shankland by a 5.5-2.5 margin (also winning the last three games).

Tomorrow's best-of-ten 3+2 blitz matches are, in temporal order, Levon Aronian vs. Gawain Jones, Anish Giri vs. Peter Svidler, Magnus Carlsen vs. S.L. Narayanan, Alexander Grischuk vs. Rauf Mamedov, and Fabiano Caruana vs. Matthias Bluebaum. The round of 16 ends with a single match on Wednesday between Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Grigoriy Oparin.

More info here.

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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