US Championships Underway
The first round of the 2010 US Championships saw lots of decisive games, and a significant upset, with lowest seed Krush (pictured) beating Kaidanov. Another upset occurred when Khachiyan edged out Lenderman in a close game.
Nakamura kicked off his title defence in fine style winning a typical tactical tussle with Stripunsky. The other established international star in the field, Kamsky, had to work hard to beat the talented young star Ray Robson in another hard fought game.
In all there were eight decisive events out of the 12 played in an exciting first round. The results in full:
| GM Stripunsky, Alexander | 0-1 | GM Nakamura, Hikaru |
| GM Kamsky, Gata | 1-0 | GM Robson, Ray |
| GM Benjamin, Joel | 0-1 | GM Onischuk, Alexander |
| GM Shulman, Yuri | ½-½ | GM Bhat, Vinay S |
| GM Finegold, Benjamin | ½-½ | GM Akobian, Varuzhan |
| IM Lenderman, Alex | 0-1 | GM Khachiyan, Melikset |
| GM Yermolinsky, Alex | 0-1 | GM Ehlvest, Jaan |
| GM Hess, Robert L | 1-0 | IM Shankland, Samuel |
| GM Kraai, Jesse | ½-½ | GM Shabalov, Alexander |
| GM Christiansen, Larry | 1-0 | GM Gurevich, Dmitry |
| IM Krush, Irina | 1-0 | GM Kaidanov, Gregory |
| GM Kudrin, Sergey | ½-½ | IM Altounian, Levon |
A selection of games are below. All the first round games are available at the official website, which has live coverage of round two from 14:00 local time (Central Standard Time) today.
Vinay Bhat held Yuri Shulman to a draw with black (picture by Betsy Dynako at the official site)
