Speed Chess Championship 2020 - An Event to Watch

This year has been quite exciting for all of us chess fans as we are witnessing more and more tournaments featuring Super Grandmasters and there is non-stop action going on the board. The latest upcoming tournament where we will see clash of these top players is the 2020 Speed Chess Championship (SCC) organized by Chess.com. The 2020 Speed Chess Championship is destined to become a legendary tournament as various new things are added to SCC 2020. Let's have a closer look at what this tournament is all about and what we fans will look out for.

                               

Courtesy - Chess.com

 Event Overview

The SCC 2020 is an online Blitz tournament which will feature 16 players comprising of super grandmasters as well as some up-coming players who can be lethal in shorter format of the game. The event start from November 1st and will stretch up to December 13th .This will be a Knock- out tournament where  players will play matches of 5+1, 3+1, and 1+1 games. An interesting thing about this tournament is its prize money. It is been said that the prize fund for this year's Speed Chess Championship is a stellar $100,000, double the amount from last year and not only for the winner but it has been increased for the players progressing in each round of the tournament.

 General Qualification Format.

The 2020 Speed Chess Championship has got a brand new multi event qualification system. There are total 16 players participating in SSC 2020, from which 8 players are been directly invited by the Organisers ,7 players are qualified from various events and the previous year winner gets a direct entry to the event. The players who got direct invitation by the organisers are World championship candidates GM Fabiano Caruana along with Super GMs like Anish Giri, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave as well as the fresh U.S. Champion GM Wesley So. The 17 year old sensation GM Alireza Firoujza who just finished 2nd behind World Champion Magnus Carlsen in Norway Altibox championship also gets a invitation to the event. Young Indian GM Nihal Sarin qualified as the winner of the Junior Speed Chess Championship‎. GMs Vladislav Artemiev, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Parham Maghsoodloo, and Haik Martirosyan get qualified from Speed Chess Championship Grand Prix‎. The Super Swiss was won by GM Hikaru Nakamura, who is directly seeded into the Main Event as last year's winner so the spot was given to GM Vladimir Fedoseev who finished as the runner-up of the Super Swiss and GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda grabs the last spot by winning the Speed Chess Championship Invitational.

Courtesy - Chess.com

Return of Carlsen

The last time when Magnus participated in any Chess.com event was in 2018 Pro Chess League. There have been rumors in the past that everything is not well between Magnus and chess.com which arise due to some exchanges of tweets between two of them. But as we all know how professional these players and communities are ,its seems that there is no problem what so ever ,as we can see the return of World Champion in SCC 2020.Magnus had played his first match against Maghsoodloo on November 2nd.

The return of Carlsen also once again invokes possibility of the clash of titans in the finals as two of them are in different groups. Here, I am talking about his old nemesis in shorter format and popularly known as 'The Speed Demon' i.e. GM Hikaru Nakamura. The two of them have always been around at the top in highest level of the Rapid or Blitz event. Hikaru is the highest rated blitz player on chess.com and as well as in FIDE ratings and is also the top seed of the tournament whereas Magnus is current World Blitz Champion .So it is highly expected that two of them will go far in tournament and may once again face each other in the finals as we have have seen them doing for a while.

GM Hikaru Nakamura and GM Magnus Carlsen

The Dark Knights may rise....

Although Magnus and Hikaru are one of the best players and are favorites too ,but by no means the road to the finals will be a walk in the park for them .Hikaru will face players like Firoujza who is constantly getting stronger and have capability to take on any players in Blitz or Rapid and Wesley So who just won his second U.S. Championship title earlier today (also played online!) and also have reached the final of the last two Speed Chess Championships. Magnus will also encounter some serious hurdles in his way as he may face players like Ian Nepomniachtchi , Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Anish Giri.

Not just these mentioned name but each and every players participating in the event are very strong and have potential to take on any opponent. All in all this is going to be a great tournament for players in terms of Prize and the competitiveness of players as well as for fans as we will surely see some high quality games and watch our favorite players once again playing at the very top level.

Results of first two games

The first two day of the tournament were quite eventful as we saw MVL and Magnus exhibiting why they are known as Super Grandmasters. MVL on first day took on young Indian GM Nihal Sarin ,who is one the best player in these format. Nihal put up a great fight against his opponent but the World number 3 got better of him with the final score of 16.5-11.5. On day two we saw a sterling performance by Magnus crushing Maghsoodloo by 24-5.It was their first encounter in any tournament and the world champion clearly dominated him .Even after getting some wore positions in initial games he managed to get the results in his favor.

Courtesy - Chess.com

 My prediction for the rest of the matches of first round are-

Firoujza-Fedoseev : - Firoujza

So-Abdusattorov : - So

Nepomniachtchi-Aronian : - Nepomniachtchi

Nakamura-Martirosyan  :- Nakamura

Caruana-Duda  :- Caruana 

Giri-Artemiev : - Giri