Haik Martirosyan Beats Vincent Keymer In Junior Speed Chess Championship
GM Haik Martirosyan comfortably reached the quarterfinals of the Junior Speed Chess Championship sponsored by ChessKid. In a match on Monday, the talented Armenian beat Germany's Vincent Keymer with the biggest score so far in the competition: 20.5-7.5.
The SmarterChess predictions continue to be spot on for these matches. Although most would have loved to see a closer match, Martirosyan was simply way too strong for Keymer in this online format. His many powerful performances in our weekly Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix events (he is likely to play today as well) also kind of predicted this result.
Martirosyan (@Micki-taryan) took a commanding 6-0 lead in the five-minute segment before Keymer (@VincentKeymer) got on the scoreboard with the first draw. The German player then got his first win as well in an amazing comeback:
Martirosyan won the five-minute portion 7-2, the three-minute with 7-2 as well, and the bullet 6.5-3.5. The following bullet game shows the wide array of tactical wizardry that the winner of this match possesses. It was a certain draw until Keymer suddenly fell into an unexpected mating sequence.
All games
Keymer earned $133.93 based on win percentage; Martirosyan won $500 for the victory plus $366.07 on percentage, totaling $866.07. He moves on to the next round, where he will play the winner of the match GM Parham Maghsoodloo vs. GM Praggnanandhaa R. that is on September 19.
"Throughout the whole match, I had the problem that I had quite a few good positions that I lost or didn’t win. Maybe this was the biggest problem," said Keymer.
Martirosyan modestly stated that his victory was based on "having more time" on the clock in most games, but he also admitted he was seeing a lot of tactics.
The live broadcast of the match.
Remaining matches in the round of 16:
- Sept. 19: Parham Maghsoodloo vs. Praggnanandhaa R. at 9 a.m. Pacific / 18:00 Central Europe
- Sept. 20: Alexey Sarana vs. Andrey Esipenko at 12 p.m. Pacific / 21:00 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.
See also:
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!
Company Contact and News Accreditation:
Email: peter@chess.com FOR SUPPORT PLEASE USE chess.com/support!
Phone: 1 (800) 318-2827
Address: 877 E 1200 S #970397, Orem, UT 84097
