Tata Steel Chess Tournament Master introduction: Jan-Krzysztof Duda.
Reading all 14 portraits of the 2019-edition of the Tata Steel Masters, will lead to a high number of the word ‘prodigy’. As many others in this group, Duda gained the Grandmaster title at an early age: 15 years and 21 days. The reigning Polish Champion has already an impressive list with career highlights, a.o. the shared 1st place in the Junior World Championship in 2015, taking silver behind winner Antipov on tiebreak.
2018 became Duda’s year of his international breakthrough. Besides winning the strong national championship (before Wojtaszek) he finished 4th in Dortmund and performed very well at the Chess Olympiad in Batumi, where he drew on first board against the elite players Levon Aronian, Viswanathan Anand, Fabiano Caruana, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Sergey Karjakin. In 2014 Duda finished with 7-13 in the Challengers, his only Tata Steel Chess appearance so far. It is now time to see him perform at the highest level in Wijk aan Zee! In the World Championship Blitz in St. Petersburg (29 and 30 December 2018) Duda proved that he is ready, finishing second behind winner Magnus Carlsen with an incredible score of 16,5-21, which would normally would be enough for victory, but Carlsen is – of course – Carlsen and he won with 17-21.
Country: Poland
Photo: New in Chess
