The 2024 U.S. Championship subject has been blown extensive open after GMs Fabiano Caruana, Hans Niemann, and Awonder Liang gained their respective video games in opposition to GMs Ray Robson, Leinier Dominguez, and Levon Aronian and have joined main GMs Wesley So and Sam Sevian on 2/3.
Within the ladies’s occasion, IM Carissa Yip gained her third straight recreation, this time in opposition to WGM Jennifer Yu, whereas WGM Tatev Abrahamyan and IM Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova each gained their video games to remain in contact with the lead.
Spherical 4 of the U.S. Championships begins on October 14 at 2 p.m. ET/20:00 CEST/11:30 p.m. IST.
Spherical 3 Standings: Championship
Spherical 3 Standings: Girls’s Championship
U.S. Championship
Caruana can breathe a sigh of reduction figuring out his title protection is again on monitor following his spherical three routing of Robson. Waking up feeling “bold” about his probabilities of profitable the match, Caruana opted to play a “very uncommon line” within the Queen’s Gambit Declined that “led to a struggle.” Caruana didn’t understate the rareness of the road, as after White’s 8.Bf4 the place had solely been reached as soon as (Tsvetkov-Rodrigo, 2024).
The middlegame that arose was near equal however sufficiently imbalanced and it wasn’t lengthy earlier than Robson elected to play a rose-colored e-pawn break, permitting Caruana to finally acquire the ascendancy.
In a post-match interview with WGM Anastasiya Karlovich, Caruana expressed that his 2/3 begin with two Blacks, contemplating his opponents, bodes properly for his title protection: “I believe I’ve performed three of the strongest gamers on this match.”
Talking of a type of gamers, Niemann has continued strolling the stroll with a win over Dominguez. In a seemingly innocuous Giuoco Piano, Niemann met Dominguez’s 13…Nh5 with the incendiary 14.g4!?.
Whereas engines favored Black’s place, Niemann’s kingside assault proved too troublesome to defend in opposition to and Dominguez was dispatched in 36 strikes. Niemann would later dub this as his “favourite recreation in a very long time.”
With this victory, Niemann’s stay ranking has shot as much as 2738 and he’s now the fourth highest- rated participant within the U.S. Having shocked 5 2700s in 2024 and rising to fifteenth on the earth for the primary time, Niemann’s participation in super-GM tournaments will certainly be on the up tick.
Profitable with Black in opposition to a super-GM is likely one of the hardest assignments in chess however after Aronian performed the weakening 29.Nf4?, Liang demonstrated that one mistake is all he must beat the most effective, although it did take properly over 5 hours and 97 strikes to place Aronian away.
One spectator on YouTube joked, “Legend says Aronian Liang are nonetheless taking part in.”
Of the three drawn video games in spherical three, the conflict between So and Shankland equipped the gripping moments. The Berlin Protection isn’t recognized for being essentially the most thrilling opening however 16 strikes in, White missed a chance to show the sport right into a kingside slugfest. Shankland continued to press till he had a lone bishop on the board with the kings however So held agency.
4 out of 5 of the leaders will play with the white items in spherical 4 and with the remainder day looming, count on to see each ounce of power expended on these video games. The best ranking disparity is between Caruana and GM Abhimanyu Mishra (169 factors) however the 15-year-old has been unflappable on U.S. Chess’ largest stage to this point.
U.S. Girls’s Championship
Yip’s excellent run continued in spherical three on the U.S. Girls’s Championship as she slayed Yu’s “Dragadorf”/Hungarian-inspired Sicilian Protection. Yu tried to take Yip out of her consolation zone by castling lengthy, a uncommon sight in nearly all variations of the Dragon, and shortly discovered herself combating to carry on as Yip swung her items to the kingside.
A glimmer of hope for a draw appeared for Yu because of time stress on Yip however in the long run, the defending champion’s will to win received her over the road. Will Yip be capable to add to her five-game profitable streak in spherical 4 or will GM Irina Krush put an finish to her rampage?
Trailing the lead by half a degree, Abrahamyan has additionally had a powerful occasion to this point and in spherical 4 she was capable of outplay WGM Atousa Pourkashiyan in a rook endgame.
If fashion factors got out every spherical then Tokhirjonova would have gained them in spherical 4. Determined to remain in contact with the leaders, the fourth-seed performed Tiger’s Trendy Protection adopted by a g6-g5 pawn push on transfer seven which might have been mistaken for a mouse slip had it been performed on-line.
The gamble paid off for Tokhirjonova who strikes to 2/3 forward of her recreation in opposition to IM Anna Zatonskih in spherical 4.
Comparatively uneventful attracts transpired in Zatonskih-Krush and IM Nazi Paikidze-IM Alice Lee (Lee celebrated her fifteenth birthday in the present day) however the different draw, between WGM Thalia Cervantes and FM Rose Atwell, was the wildest of the ladies’s occasion to this point.
Atwell, who has develop into a dependable narrator on Twitter, summed up the sport properly…
At present I performed WGM Thalia Cervantes within the US Champs. We received a draw. I used to be black and performed the QGA. The sport was irritating as a result of I outplayed her within the middlegame and I used to be completely profitable with an assault on her king (see beneath). However I ran too low on time. 😒 #USChessChamps pic.twitter.com/klYah4Jc2V
— Rose Atwell (@atwell_rose) October 13, 2024
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The 2024 U.S. Chess Championship is an invitational classical occasion that determines the chess champion of the US. The 2024 U.S. Girls’s Championship is being held concurrently. Each occasions begin on October 11 and have the identical format: a 12-player, 11-round match with a $250,000 prize fund for the U.S. Championship, and $152,000 for the U.S. Girls’s Championship.
