Chen, Zverev Advance To ChessKid Youth SCC Finals

NM Ryo Chen (USA) and CM Lev Zverev (Russia) will compete this Saturday, July 31, for the title of 2021 ChessKid Youth Speed Chess Champion. Both won their semifinal matches last Saturday, with Ryo taking out NM Tani Adewumi and Lev besting CM Ilan Schnaider.

Ryo is the defending champion, but will go into this year's finals as the higher seed, unlike last year. He is the number one seed while Lev is the third seed. At stake will be the $1000 first prize (which is added their winnings so far) and lessons with a super-GM.

You can watch the finals this Saturday, July 31, at 7am Pacific/10am Eastern/3pm CET/5pm Moscow on Chess.com/TV. The hosts will be FunMasterMike (FM Mike Klein) and PlayfulSquirrel (IM David Pruess).

Here is the path that both players took to get to the finals (you can also read about their opening-round victories here):

Ryo struggled early against Tani. The two were very evenly matched at the outset. Unlike his opening-round match, which went 20 games and didn't feature a single draw, Tani made a draw in three of the opening four games.

Ryo played a lot of King's Indian Defense and Benoni structures, which produced tactics with his dark-square bishop like this one. See if you can find how Ryo (Black) won his first game to take the lead:

Did you figure out it? Check your answer here on Black's 24th move.

But Tani came back. Even though he's done more puzzles on ChessKid than nearly anyone else, he used an advanced positional idea to grab his first win in a long struggle.

Do you see what idea Tani used here as White? (Sorry ChessKids it is so advanced that it is not even in my video on Wedge Pawns!)

Did you play like Tani? To check, skip to White's 11th move here!

Despite this nice endgame conversion, Ryo pulled off a few more wins in the 5-minute segment to take a lead that was insurmountable. The 3-minute was nearly a "draw" so the final score was 10.0-5.0 as the returning champion marched onward in the bracket.

In the other semifinal, the two candidate masters Lev Zverev and Ilan Schnaider (Argentina) squared off.

Ilan jumped out to a lead using the complicated Winawer system of the French Defense. He won the opening game with a very similar tactic to Ryo's from earlier in this article. If you got that one, you'll probably solve this one with ease!

What move did Ilan play as Black to attack both sides of the board here?

We're guessing you got this one by looking for both LPDO and PP on the PP, but if you need to be sure, check out the game!

Lev came charging back, winning the next five games to take a commanding lead. In fact, he would only lose one more game in the match. It ended 10.0-3.0 in his favor.

Here's one of his nicest wins that even the commentators didn't understand at first. Even though it seemed his own king was in big trouble for most of the game, Lev calmly found a way to turn the tables.

Black to move and play like Lev!

There was actually a few ways to win but see if you chose the same one as the winner!

Here's the full replay:

Don't forget to tune in this Saturday at 7am Pacific/5pm Moscow to Chess.com/TV to see who will be the grand champion of the ChessKid Youth SCC!