The match of the Millennials

Hi ChessKids!

Many of you may have already heard of the Match of the Millennials. If not, well, I'll give a brief overview here. 

The Match of the Millennials was a match of the best U.S. juniors against the best juniors from the rest of the world. All of the players were born after 2000. There were three sections: u17, u14, and u14 girls. There were eight rounds for the u17 section with two games per day, one in the morning and one in the evening. For the u14 sections, there were only four rounds, one game per day in the evening.

For the U.S. team, our players in the u17 section were: GM Jeffery Xiong, GM Sam Sevian, GM Ruifeng Li, IM John Michael Burke, and IM Nicolas Checa. The world u17 team consisted of: GM Aryan Chopra of India, IM Anton Smirnov of Australia, FM Andrey Esipenko of Russia, IM Haik Matirosyan of Armenia, and GM Alexey Sarana of Russia.

In the u14 section, the USA players were GM-elect Awonder Liang, and CM Andrew Hong, while the world players were IM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and IM Nodirbek Abdusattarov. For u14 girls, WFM Martha Samadashvili and yours truly represented the U.S. while FM Nurgyul Salimova and WFM Bibisara Assaubayeva represented the world.

Members of Team USA.

 

Members of the World Team.

A week or so before the match started the USA team had a training camp organized by Kasparov Chess Foundation. Basically we did preparation for our opponents in the match. Our coaches in the camp were GM Alex Onischuk, GM Alex Chernin, and IM Armen Ambartsoumian. 

Kasparov Chess Foundation training camp.

Now on to the match itself! 

Day One:

Everyone was pretty nervous about the upcoming match, since this was our one chance to prove that USA could compete with the rest of the world. In round one of the u17 section, it was tied 2-2 after Burke lost a critical game to Chopra. In round two of the u17 section, the round finished again with 2-2. 

In the u14 sections, we lost 2.5-1.5. Hong had an exciting game against Abdusattarov with a strong attack but missed a tactic and ended up in an equal rook endgame. Having no time, he made inaccuracies and lost. However, Samadashvili managed to win a drawn rook endgame when her opponent Salimova flagged. The time control was 90 minutes with 30-second increment, but no second time control after 40 moves. Salimova was probably unaware of this fact and so she flagged. Round one lasted for almost six hours because of my lengthy game of 100+ moves against Assaubayeva, where I eventually lost.

 

Day Two:

Round three for u17 was again 2-2. But round four seemed to be where u17 started to falter, where we lost 2.5-1.5. In round two for u14, we managed to tie this time with 2-2. Both Liang and Hong drew, and Samadashvili lost, but I managed to beat Salimova in another 100+ moves crazy battle. First I was worse, then in time trouble she blundered a piece, then I also messed up again in time trouble and blundered mate in two. Thankfully, she missed it as well, and we reached an endgame where I was simply up a piece and pawn. However, I managed to mess it up as well in time trouble once more, and it was a draw again. Then she made a mistake and I was winning once more...you get the idea. In the end though, I managed to win the game and tie the match 2-2.

 

 

Day Three (Bloody Friday): Morning

This day deserves to be split into two sections because of how dramatic it was. Hong, Liang, Onischuk, and I ate lunch together and watched as Xiong somehow managed to lose a dead drawn position, making our overall score in the match -4. It was 2-1 for the world team and Xiong's game was the last one. If he managed to win, then we could tie that round. However, his position was a dead drawn knight endgame, so when he pushed for a win, he ended up overextending and lost. We were at -4 of course, but I still thought that we could somehow turn the tables and win the match. All of this changed after the evening round. 

Day Three (Bloody Friday): Evening 

Xiong was probably still a bit upset over the morning round, so he drew quite quickly this round. That 0.5 was the only half point we got for the USA that night. Li, Sevian, and Burke all lost their games, so we lost 3.5-0.5 in the u17 section. But the u14 section was worse. We lost 4-0, with the score that round being 7.5-0.5. And we were now -11 overall. All of us, especially the coaches, were understandably distressed. But all was not yet lost! If we managed to win every single game tomorrow, we could still win the match. 

Final Day: 

I would like to say that we managed to win all of our games and there was a final dramatic battle where we managed to prevail. But the facts were the world team needed only one point for them to win the entire match. And that one point came from Esipenko after beating Checa. Now it was mathematically impossible for us to win the match. Round seven for u17 was, again, tied 2-2, but it didn't matter any longer. Round eight was also tied 2-2 for u17, and round 4 for u14 ended with us losing 3-1. 

Some of you may be asking, "What's next for me after these terrible tournaments?" (I did really badly in U.S. Junior Girls as well).

Well, of course, after a bad tournament you have to go back and analyze your games to see where you went wrong. I managed to lose almost twice the points that I gained at World Open (which I'll talk about in the next article). Obviously I didn't play up to my rating in the U.S. Junior Girls and this match, so I'll just have to go through my games to see why I played so badly and hopefully fix my mistakes so I'll be ready for U.S. Cadets in just two weeks. 

Until next time then ChessKids!