NM Ryo Chen (USA) won the 2021 ChessKid Youth Speed Chess Championship after defeating CM Lev Zverev (Russia) on Saturday, July 31! This annual event is the most prestigious on the ChessKid calendar, featuring only the top 10-and-under chess superstars from around the globe.

Ryo successfully defended his title after winning last year’s event, making him the first player to win two years in a row. The champion will take $1,000 home for the final and $1,800 in total, besides having the privilege of taking lessons with a super-grandmaster (to be named later).

In the final, the match between the two prodigies started with a draw. However, Ryo managed to pull away in the end to finish with an impressive 12.5-3.5 score.

Ryo’s Path To Victory

It is clear that Ryo learned and mastered many of the concepts taught on ChessKid’s videos. In the game below you can see the champion playing “old man chess” and simplifying the position into a winning endgame.

In this other game, Ryo used his pawns as a snowplow to push his opponent’s pieces back and gain space, letting him set up an unstoppable mate.

The champion also clearly understands the concept of building a battery with his pieces. His two games below show him executing this sort of maneuver to win two games in similar fashion.

For a young kid, Ryo exhibits incredible maturity to understand the exceptions of general chess rules—even for advanced concepts. Even though FunMasterMike explains in this video how endgames with a queen against a rook and a pawn on the seventh rank usually end in a draw, Ryo understood that this rule does not always hold true. Realizing that his opponent had a second pawn that eliminated the possibility of a stalemate, the young champion found the winning idea of the position to score yet another point.

If you can’t figure out the ending by yourself you can use Chess.com’s new tablebase feature or check the game’s actual ending below:

Watch the full broadcast of the final below, with expert commentary by FunMasterMike (FM Mike Klein) and PlayfulSquirrel (IM David Pruess). You can also click here to read about the quarterfinals and semifinals!