GM Hikaru Nakamura opened the tournament with an Evans Gambit vs. GM Robert Hess and ended it with a Labourdonais-McDonnell Attack vs. GM Yasser Seirawan to win his third U.S. Chess Championship. It seems Nakamura learned to take the opening seriously when Stripunsky used it against him in the 2010 championship tournament. GM Igor Glek wrote an article about this old system in S.O.S. #8, which inspired me to take it up and write a couple articles about it myself, starting with "Reviving a Fascinating Anti-French." I suspect Naka's game against Seirawan may soon be an "S.O.S. game of the month," which means a few hundred dollars to add to his $40K for winning the championship. Ironically, he last won the U.S. Championship using a different S.O.S. suggestion in his final round victory over Josh Friedel.
In the U.S. Women's event, Krush took the tie-breaker over Zatonskih.
No comments:
Post a Comment