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GM-elect Yagiz Erdogmus defeated FM Henry Tudor in the Final of the ChessKid Youth Championship 2024 for players under 13. While the Turkish prodigy was the clear favorite to win this event, Tudor managed to finish the regular games with a tied 2-2 score, and it was only in overtime that Erdogmus powered through with a 2-0 sweep.
The under-16 section, featuring several grandmasters and the newly-minted world’s youngest IM at age 10, begins next weekend. Don’t miss the action, starting on July 6 at 9 a.m. ET / 15:00 CEST / 6:30 p.m. IST.
Knockout Bracket
Semifinals: Favorites Win, Progress To Final
The matches in the single-elimination bracket were best of four (i.e. first player to 2.5 points), with the same time control of 3+1. Both players who finished first in their groups on the previous day won their semifinal matches.
Erdogmus 3-0 Mendes
Erdogmus came out of the gates with a resounding 3-0 sweep in the first round. The very first game was a positional win, where he exploited an isolated queen’s pawn and a weak f5-square.
Game two was a glimmer of hope for Mendes, who in a French Defense looked like he was going to blow Erdogmus off the board several times. The teenage GM-elect, however, just kept on surviving until, soon enough, he managed to win.
Mendes was so close to winning game two, but Erdogmus does not go gentle into that good night!
Erdogmus now has a 2-0 score. pic.twitter.com/0FC8MGPVMu
— chess24 (@chess24com) June 30, 2024
The Turkish prodigy won a third time to move onto the Final.
Tudor 4-2 Radzimski
This match was much closer, at least in the beginning. Tudor was ahead, lost control near the end, but narrowly took over once again.
After game three, Tudor led 2-1 and could have closed out the match if, in the time scramble, he had found 43…Rh8!. Instead, he resigned a few moves after the critical moment.
With a 2-2 score now, the match was once again an open question. The drama was short-lived, however, as Radzimski mixed up his move order in a sequence and left his queen hanging:
Henry Tudor is gifted the Botez Gambit and now needs just a draw with White! pic.twitter.com/egDlnzLyR2
— chess24 (@chess24com) June 30, 2024
Tudor went on to win the final game, where he needed only a draw with White, and joined Erdogmus in the Final.
Final: Tudor Wins On Demand To Reach Overtime, Erdogmus Then Wins 2-0
Especially considering the difference in rating, it was an incredibly close final match. Tudor managed to force overtime with a clutch final victory, but Erdogmus shut down further dreams of a comeback after that.
The beginning of the match was a strong start for the Romanian FM. They went toe-to-toe in a time scramble in game one, but Tudor lost after blundering his queen to a tactic. He rebounded in game two, however, when his opponent blundered a knight in another scramble:
Yagiz loses his first game today and we have a tied score! pic.twitter.com/QLgvOi1J2F
— chess24 (@chess24com) June 30, 2024
Erdogmus found 23.Bxh6! in game three, a lovely combination to finish the game.
But Tudor pulled off a combination of his own, winning on demand to force overtime with a 2-2 score.
Erdogmus pulled away in the tiebreaks, winning both games. The first one featured the tactical theme of “LPDO” (Loose Pieces Drop Off) as the undefended white queen on d2 allowed two bulldozer moves, 29…Bxg4! and 30…Bxh3!.
Erdogmus, in fact, won two titles this weekend. After playing in the round-robin stage on the previous day, he also went ahead and became the first junior to win Bullet Brawl. That’s $1,500 earned in the ChessKid Youth Championship, and another $400 in the Bullet Brawl.
He will also be participating in next weekend’s under-16 tournament, but he will be met with much stiffer resistance. Here are the other young stars in that tournament:
The ChessKid Youth Championships are Chess.com’s top events for the next generation of the chess elite. The two sections, for players under 13 and under 16, take place from June 29-July 7. All games are played with the 3+1 time control and the prize fund is $15,000.
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