The action continues, with Varuzhan Akobian and Alexander Onischuk scoring for this second round of the US Chess Championship 2017, joining Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura at the top of the ranking.
[csvtable file=”http://chesshive.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/us-chess-2017-round-2-results.csv”]
Replay all Round 2 games below:[replay]
The US Chess Championships 2017 is an 11-round, 12-player tournament, among the very strong members of the USCF. This happens in St. Louis from 29 March to 10 April 2017.
In the opening round, we saw the top seed, Wesley So, slated against the last seed, Alexander Shabalov. So won that game. Another decisive game in Round 1 was the game of Hikaru Nakamura, playing as black, winning against Ray Robson.
[csvtable file=”http://chesshive.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/us-chess-2017-round-1-results.csv”]
Hikaru Nakamura and Yu Yangyi won their respective games in the final Round 10 of Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017, to get a shot at the title when David Antón Guijarro drew his game against Michael Adams.
At the end of Round 10, Guijarro, Nakamura, and Yu were tied, thus necessitated a playoff:
[csvtable file=”http://chesshive.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/gibraltar-final.csv”]
GM David Anton Guijarro
David Anton Guijarro beats Veselin Topalov in the penultimate Round 9 of Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017 ([replay]) to take the solo lead with 1 round to go. He might only be the 24th seed (ELO 2650) coming into this tournament, but he finds himself ahead of household names in the chess world such as Hikaru Nakamura, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Michael Adams, Boris Gelfand, and especially Fabiano Caruana.
Caruana is having a hard time in this tournament after he lost to Nigel Short in the 6th round and drew with several lower rated players in earlier rounds before that, thus he’s at No. 12 in the ranking after Round 9. He’s currently at 3rd place in the live ratings with 2819.7. He’s set to face Varuzhan Akobian in the final round.
Fabiano Caruana wins his last game against IM Akshat Chandra to establish a full point solo lead at the recently concluded US Chess Championship 2016.
Final Standings – US Chess Championship 2016
Wesley So settled for 2nd place where he shared the score 7.5 with Hikaru Nakamura.
On Chessbase news: US Championship 2016 – The strongest ever?
Three top ten players start in the US Championship 2016 and nominally it is the strongest US Championship of all times. But can you really compare today’s tournaments with those of the past? Andy Soltis takes a look at previous Championships that were surprisingly strong and concludes that in a historical context 2016 might not be “the strongest ever”.
Let Magnus Carlsen and the rest of the top 10 gang play, and sure you may call it the strongest US Championship ever.
My point is, if you ask the question, “Is the 2016 US Championship by native Americans the strongest ever?” Then the answer is NO!
US Chess Champs, 5: So’s sweet revenge
In 2015 Wesley So’s US Championship was derailed when he lost a 6-move forfeit game against Varuzhan Akobian. This year they got to play a full game, or at least 24 moves, which was all it took for So to crush his opponent.
Sweet revenge, indeed!