Chinese Rapid Championship final: Yu Yangyi beats Xiao Tong 4–3

Defending champion Yu Yangyi won the fifth Chinese Rapid Championship after a final that went through four rapid games, two blitz games and an Armageddon decider. The tournament took place in Shaoxing from 2 November to 6.

Xiao Tong, 18, won the opening game playing Black. After a draw in the second game, Yu won the third and drew the fourth, leaving the rapid portion tied at 2–2. Yu then won the first blitz game and Xiao the second, sending the final to Armageddon.

In the decider, Yu played Black with draw odds: a draw would have given him the match. Instead, he won outright with checkmate on move 48. ChessBase published the completed results.

The route to the final

The knockout tournament had 24 players, with eight seeds advancing directly to the round of 16. Each match consisted of four rapid games, with 15 minutes per player and 10 seconds added after each move. If needed, blitz tiebreaks followed at 3 minutes per player plus 2 seconds per move.

Yu, the second seed, came through a difficult quarterfinal against Bai Jinshi and was the only top-four seed to reach the semifinals. Xiao eliminated Ding Liren in the quarterfinals in blitz. Xiao entered the knockout stage with a rapid rating of 2476, compared with Yu’s 2679, and became the first player born in the 2000s to reach the championship final.

In the November 5 semifinals, Yu beat Xu Xiangyu 3–0 with three straight rapid wins. Xiao beat Lu Shanglei 3½–2½ after all four of their rapid games were drawn.

Lu takes third

Lu won both blitz tiebreak games against Xu in the third-place match, leaving Xu fourth. Lu is a Chinese grandmaster who won the 2014 World Junior Chess Championship; Yu, also a grandmaster, won that title in 2013 and the Asian Championship in 2014.