Sun Yongzheng

The player

Sun Yongzheng, born in Shanghai in 1981, is the 2011 national individual champion, named a grandmaster that year. A product of the strong Shanghai chess system, he reached the national masters as a teenager and went on to win the sport’s highest domestic title.

He was one of the leading players of the Shanghai team through the 2000s and 2010s. The games here catch him on the way up - taking on, and beating, the established champions of the era.

Sun Yongzheng - Lü Qin, 2001

2001 National Individual Championship · 2001 · Sun Yongzheng (red) vs Lü Qin (black)

Sun Yongzheng of Shanghai - a future national champion - takes red against the great Lü Qin at the individual championship. A long, ambitious game from a player on the rise.

First blood is a soldier on move fifteen and the sharpest fighting comes in the late thirties. Sun keeps two cannons bearing down and reduces Lü Qin’s forces to a bare defence; by move 111 there is nothing left to hold. A statement win over a legend.

Sun Yongzheng - Zhao Guorong, 1999

1999 National Individual Championship · 1999 · Zhao Guorong (red) vs Sun Yongzheng (black)

Sun Yongzheng with Black against Zhao Guorong, and a short, violent game - just forty-five plies. When both players commit to a Central Cannon fight, the margins are thin.

The exchanges begin on move twenty and never stop, five in the next ten moves. Sun comes out of the melee up the exchange - two chariots against one - and Zhao, a piece down with no attack, resigns. A rare quick loss for one of the era’s steadiest champions.