U.S. Chess Championship: Sevian Surges To The Top
On Sunday, the number of leaders went from four to five at the 2019 U.S. championship. Sam Sevian defeated Varuzhan Akobian to join the group on plus one. Jennifer Yu dropped her first half-point but still leads the women's tournament.
U.S. Championship:
The big clash between Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana finished early. Again deploying the Sveshnikov ("We did so much during the match on it, I figured why not use it!" said Caruana), the world championship challenger was quickly out of book but found some good moves on his own to hold the balance without too much trouble.
"The thing is I was winning so many games with the Petroff and I am not winning any games with the Sveshnikov so you tell me which opening is sharper!" joked Caruana.
The day before, on Twitter, Magnus Carlsen had teased Caruana for not winning for 26 games in a row.
When your winless streak matches your age #goals #Caruana
— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) March 23, 2019
Caruana didn't reply online (his last tweet is from late January, when he responded to Kramnik's retirement) but wittily responded to Maurice Ashley: "I'll take any record I can get!"
Another top grandmaster, who is rather omnipresent on Twitter, did react.
The top two players leaving me totally recordless lately. I guess I gotta look for a new legacy for myself. #goals #Carlsen #Caruana ⚔ https://t.co/V4sfedfoJN
— Anish Giri (@anishgiri) March 24, 2019
After teaming up for a good cause, Carlsen and Giri quickly returned to more familiar ways of communicating as they trolled each other further:
Don't worry, your world record of zero tournament wins is still safe https://t.co/yQLCq9ougy
— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) March 24, 2019
Ever won Reykjavik Open, bigboy?🤣
— Anish Giri (@anishgiri) March 24, 2019
I led before the last round in 06, lost a much better position to Adly and cried bitterly. You really do know my weak spots! https://t.co/XjncSvAOmv
— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) March 24, 2019
Sam Sevian is now also one of the leaders, after an excellent, attacking win with the black pieces vs Var Akobian. The latter regretted not taking on e5 in the opening, after which Black's play was relatively easy.
Sevian decided to unleash an attack that was kind of hanging in the air anyway. Akobian's time trouble didn't help him finding the difficult defense, despite the fact that 29.f5 is kind of a reflex move that he could have played in a blitz game.
Timur Gareyev, who didn't continue playing in the Mid-American Open after missing the third round there (and probably realizing that playing two tournaments simultaneously is too crazy even for a blindfold simul specialist!), won his first game in the tournament.
His opponent, Awonder Liang, is now in last place with 1.5/5. It was deep in a rook endgame where he made the decisive mistake:
U.S. Women's Championship:
FM Carissa Yip has been providing quite a bit of entertainment so far, playing a tournament without draws. Her rather easy win against FM Maggie Feng got her back to plus one.
WGM Tatev Abrahamyan is now in third place after winning three games in a row. On Sunday she beat WIM Ashritha Eswaran from the black side of a French defense. It was the positional line with ...Qd7 and it worked out perfectly for Black when a beautiful knight on c4 was dominating a bishop on c1.
The official broadcast of round five.
Previous reports:
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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