Yu Yangyi Wins Armageddon to Keep Chinese Rapid Title

Yu Yangyi has kept his crown at the fifth Chinese Rapid Championship in Shaoxing (2 to 6 November), beating 18-year-old Xiao Tong 4-3 in an Armageddon decider after six games failed to split them. Yu was the second seed, and it is his second title in a row.

The final was a seesaw. Xiao, playing black, won game one. Game two was drawn, Yu won game three, and a draw in game four left it 2-2 and sent the match to blitz.

How the tiebreak went

Yu took the first blitz game and Xiao answered by winning the second. That meant Armageddon, with Yu holding black and draw odds. In an Armageddon game a draw counts as a win for black, so Yu only needed to hold.

He did not bother with that cushion. Yu won the game outright, delivering checkmate on move 48.

Time controls matter here: the rapid games were 15 minutes plus a 10-second increment, the blitz 3 minutes plus 2 seconds. Checkmating at move 48 under Armageddon pressure is a sign of control, not scrambling.

(For how these formats differ, see our explainer on time controls.)

Xiao’s run

The bigger story may be the runner-up. Xiao entered the knockout stage with a rapid rating of 2476, more than 200 points below Yu’s 2679. By the usual rating logic, a gap that size makes the lower player a heavy underdog in any single game, let alone a whole match.

He won three matches in blitz tiebreaks: against Zeng Chongsheng, Ding Liren and Lu Shanglei. The Ding result is covered in our report on Ding Liren falling to Xiao Tong in blitz.

In the semifinal, all four rapid games against Lu were drawn, and Xiao then won the blitz 3½-2½. He is the first player born in the 2000s to reach the final in the event’s five editions.

A bracket that shed its favourites

The 24-player knockout gave eight seeds byes into the round of 16. The early rounds followed the seedings, but the quarterfinals thinned the favourites: three of the top four seeds went out. Ding lost to Xiao in blitz, Wang Hao fell to Xu Xiangyu, and Bu Xiangzhi lost to Lu Shanglei.

Yu was the only top-four seed left, though he did not have an easy path. He survived a difficult quarterfinal against Bai Jinshi. In the semifinal he beat Xu Xiangyu 3-0, winning three straight rapid games.

Third place

Lu Shanglei recovered from the semifinal loss to take bronze. He beat Xu Xiangyu 4-2 overall in the third-place match, winning both blitz games after the rapid portion was level. Xu, who had removed Wang Hao earlier, finished fourth.

Yu’s results include a win over Ding Liren in the Shenzhen Masters final, which ChessBase also covers. With Ding out early here, the title went to the player who handled the bracket’s chaos best, and Xiao now has a runner-up finish against a field full of established names.