Monday
Dec062021
Speed Chess Championship: One Semi-Final Set
Monday, December 6, 2021 at 7:24PM
Two quarterfinal matches of the 2021 Chess.com Speed Chess Championship were contested today, and neither was close. The first was between Ding Liren and Levon Aronian, and the second between Hikaru Nakamura and Anish Giri. (The results, and a brief comment or two about each match, will be given in the comments.) The winners will face off in one semi-final, and Nihal Sarin will play the winner of the last quarterfinal match, between Wesley So and Fabiano Caruana. That last match will be played on the next (and possibly final) rest day of the world championship match, which is this coming Thursday.
Reader Comments (1)
Ding Liren won the first match 15-11, and it was far worse than that score suggested. Aronian got 2-3 wins in extended garbage time in the bullet, and there were two or three games that Aronian won where I couldn't understand, watching the Portuguese broadcast, why he won. (Ding still had time on the clock, his position seemed fine, and he didn't seem to have disconnected.)
As for Nakamura-Giri, Nakamura rolled to victory, 18-10. Surprisingly, Giri did quite well in the bullet, finishing with something like six draws in a row. Most of the damage was done in the three-minute segment.