7-way tie after 4 rounds U.S. Championship

GMs Nakamura, Kamsky, Onischuk, Shulman, Akobian, Christiansen and Stripunsky tie for first after four rounds of the U.S. Championship in St. Louis. These seven players all scored three points. After three more rounds there will be a four-player final.

The 2010 U.S. Chess Championship takes place May 13-25 at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis, Missouri. The event features a new format, which includes a 24-player, seven-round Swiss tournament followed by a four-player Championship final. In the event that there is no clear U.S. Champion after the quad finals, there will be a championship playoff. If after seven rounds, there are ties for the four places into the final round-robin quad, then there will be a concise fourth-place playoff on May 21, the scheduled rest day.

Participants

• The defending U.S. Champion - GM Hikaru Nakamura
• The winner of the 2009 U.S. Senior Open Championship - GM Larry Christiansen
• The winner of the 2009 U.S. Junior Championship - GM Ray Robson
• The top five qualifiers from the 2009 U.S. Open Championship - GM Alex Lenderman, GMs Sergey Kudrin, Alex Yermolinsky, Dmitry Gurevich, and Jesse Kraai
• The winner of the 2010 ICC State Champion of Champions - IM Levon Altounian
• The top 11 U.S. players by rating of the United States Chess Federation:
  • GM Gata Kamsky
  • GM Alexander Onischuk
  • GM Varuzhan Akobian
  • GM Yury Shulman
  • GM Jaan Ehlvest
  • GM Alexander Shabalov
  • GM Gregory Kaidanov
  • GM Robert Hess
  • GM Melikset Khachiyan
  • GM Joel Benjamin
  • GM Ben Finegold
• Four wildcard spots:
  • GM Alexander Stripunsky
  • GM Vinay Bhat
  • IM Sam Shankland
  • IM Irina Krush

Prizes

The winner of the final will take home $35,000. The total prize fund was increased from $135,000 to more than $170,000, the largest per capita prize fund in U.S. Championship history according to Tony Rich, executive director of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis.

Players who do not make it into the top four places after seven rounds will play two more rounds of the Swiss event. They will also have much to play for as fifth place will be awarded $10,000 and the total prize fund of the “Challenger’s Swiss” will exceed $90,000.

Videos

The Championship not only stands out as a far as prize money is concerned. Like last year, the official website is of outstanding quality. There's live commentary with WGM Jennifer Shahade and GM Maurice Ashley, and already many high-quality videos have been produced and posted.

There are promos, 'round recaps' and montages of the live shows, including yesterday's top clash Kamsky-Nakamura, which by the way was interrupted by a phone call with Magnus Carlsen, who talked about visiting the Karpov fundraiser in New York, which is tonight. This is all in the second video from the top, at the moment of writing - it's called Live-Calling Carlsen.

The organizers allowed us to embed their video show player, which is licensed under the Creative Commons license (”BY-NC-ND“).



After four rounds, seven grandmasters tie for first with 3/4. So far the tournament has seen many interesting fights - the drawing percentage is as low as 42%.

US Ch 2010 Round 4 Standings

Selection of games rounds 1-4

Game viewer by ChessTempo

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC