GM Jeffery Xiong beat IM Denis Lazavik 15.5-10.5 on Sunday in the last match in the round of 16 of the 2021 Junior Speed Chess Championship presented by ChessKid. Lazavik put up an excellent fight and actually managed to beat Xiong in the bullet section.

The live broadcast of the match.

The 20-year-old Xiong (@jefferyx on Chess.com) was, of course, the big favorite in this match, but Lazavik (@DenLaz) put up a surprisingly strong fight. Well, maybe it was not such a surprise, because the 15-year-old IM from Belarus was a recent winner of Titled Tuesday. 

Xiong started with four wins in a row before Lazavik could do something back. That should have been 5-0 until a queen was dropped:

Not affected very much, Xiong continued by winning two more games. Especially this one was quite convincing:

With a score of 12-5 before the 1|1 games, the match was virtually decided. Lazavik could walk away with his head high as he proved to be the better bullet player: he won the final part 5.5-3.5.

In the first, he was clearly ready for Xiong’s adoption of a system as Black often played by GM Hikaru Nakamura in bullet:

“To be honest, I didn’t feel so great about my play, about what I was seeing in general,” said Xiong, who played from a hotel in Moscow, on his way to the FIDE World Cup in Sochi. “At some point, I decided to really make the positions dull, just so that I would be less likely to blunder! But I would say positionally he is quite a strong player there, so I didn’t think I had much of an edge.”

Lazavik earned $201.92 based on win percentage; Xiong won $500 for the victory plus $298.08 on percentage for a total of $798.08. In the quarterfinal, Xiong will play GM Parham Maghsoodloo.

All games

The Chess.com 2021 Junior Speed Chess Championship is an online tournament for top junior players. The qualifiers for the event were held June 7-21, while the main event runs July 1-August 8. Players battle for their shares of a total prize fund of $35,000 and a spot in the Speed Chess Championship later this year. More info here; live games here. 

Previous reports: