February 2006 Archives

No, not the shores of Tripoli and this isn't From Here to Eternity, but it sure has felt like it! The countdown clock on my US Championship website has finally gone grammatically incorrect with one days left. Wahoo! We'll be having regular contests, although I'm not sure of the prizes just yet. But I'm doing trivia contests if I have to give away newsletter subscriptions and old beer coasters. Here's another reason I'm happy to be headed west:

I don't know what orifice they pulled "33" out of, but it was 14F when I woke up on Monday. Brrrr. I'll take a mild rain any day. [And it didn't even rain today. Very nice.] I'll post regular items here but will also be running a new and improved Champblog on the official site. Boris Kreiman has confirmed his participation, btw.

Been a buried with a few projects before heading off to San Diego for the US Championship tomorrow. Barely had time to watch the games yesterday, let alone post Marin's typically fine commentary this morning at ChessBase. (Apparently there was a glitch in the analysis file he sent for round six, deleting almost all his commentary. It will be replaced today, so check out the round six report again later.) (And to go all parenthetical again, while GM Marin's analyses have been overall very good and widely acclaimed by fans, his notes on Aronian-Topalov were shredded by Kasparov. To be fair, doing same-day annotations is asking for trouble, especially when the games are so complex. He's trying to provide instructive comments for fans, and is succeeding admirably in that. I'm trying to put together an analysis recap with some of Garry's comments.)

At least I missed a round with three draws. Even that couldn't get the draw average for the first half of the event over 50%, which is astounding. It's fair to say that lots of losses mean some inferior play, but it's mostly combativity. They aren't playing razor-sharp stuff – 17 games with 1.d4 nine with 1.e4 (two with 1.Nf3), but they've been playing hard in equal positions and several of these games have ended decisively. Everyone but Leko has a loss and everyone but Bacrot has a win. Would we see a higher objective quality of chess if they replaced, say, Radjabov and Bacrot with Anand and Kramnik? Yes, but we would also see draws back near 70% and many more short draws. It's not only that more draws naturally occur between super-prepared super-players but the conservatism that often takes hold in elite-only events.

Linares has been synonymous with that ultra-elite ethos for over a decade – a double round-robin (since 1998) with only the best plus a Spaniard. But recently it's often been better for bragging rights for the winner than for the fans and the chess. (The various Kasparov explosions notwithstanding.) When everybody thinks they can win any given game and plays accordingly, that gives us some great fighting chess. Speaking of, the story of the event so far is Topalov's collapse. The highest-rated player in the world has shown flashes of good play but has been horribly inconsistent. His loss to Vallejo Pons in round six came in just the sort of full-board attacking play in which he usually excels. Just when I was going to suggest that Vallejo nail his h-pawns to the board, he wins this one spectacularly.

Also in round six, Ivanchuk grabbed a pawn against Svidler's Grunfeld novelty in an offbeat line and held on to it like a pitbull. When Svidler tried to grab one back, on g2, his fragile position crumbled completely. When the Grunfeld goes wrong it doesn't drop out of school and get caught shoplifting. It burns down the school and robs a bank for drug money. The only decisive game of the seventh round was Bacrot's third loss in the last four rounds. It was a fantastically unbalanced game with Aronian, who isn't blowing anyone away but is proving his inventiveness and tenacity.

The other story is the return to form of Peter Leko, who was mediocre or worse in Dortmund, San Luis and Wijk aan Zee. I'd brag about having picked him to win in the message board poll, but I also picked him to win San Luis so I'm not exactly heading to the betting parlor. The Spanish half of the tournament begins on March 3. We can only hope it is as exciting as the Morelia half. Maybe all major tournaments should play a few rounds in Mexico if this is the result.

FIDE has put up the final list of players and the pairing tree for this 64-player KO event that starts in Ekaterinburg, Russia on March 10. The top seeds are a mix of veterans like Cramling and Chiburdanidze and the new school with Koneru, Kosteniuk, and Lahno. Defending champ Stefanova, former champ Zhu Chen, and another Chinese player, Xu Yuhua, are somewhere in the middle.

In such a balanced field, anyone over 2400 might win in this format. In a curious twist, my national loyalties are split in the first round as Irina Krush faces Claudia Amura, the lone American versus the only Argentine. Ninja friends to root for include Krush, Almira Skripchenko, and Svetlana Matveeva. The top rated women in the world, Judit and Susan Polgar and Xie Jun of China, aren't playing.

My opinions about professional women-only events have been given here many times � nice for affirmative action but in the long run harmful to women's chess by insulating them from top competition. Judit Polgar's mere existence turns a contrived title into one that is almost insulting. Anyway, chess is chess and big money KO's are always fun to watch in a train-wreck sort of way. And I'm always happy to see money going to chessplayers. Nice logo, too. I'd like to get a larger version.

Can you taste the salty sea air of the Pacific yet? Or maybe that's just sweat. I spent last night moving the US Championship website to a new, far mightier server. We're ramping up for the massive hit we get during the live game broadcasts. All chess sites have server loads that graph like Devil's Tower. Everybody comes in at the exact same instant, game time. Bandwidth isn't much of a problem these days, but if you're running games in an applet environment in Java or Flash, your machine needs horsepower and memory to run a few thousand simultaneous processes.

The first round is on March 2, player visits to schools and the player meeting on the first. The players can figure out their pairings easily enough, but they don't know which color they'll have until lots are drawn in San Diego. (#1 vs #17, #2 vs #18, etc. So it's Nakamura-Friedel and Kamsky-Browne on the first boards.)

The Internet Chess Club, one of the event's sponsors, is setting up a webcam at the site. Not sure if they'll have a specific page or Chess.fm. Playchess.com will also be running the games live. I expect even more player bloggers this year, always a good time. Last time there were quite a few players who had no idea what the word "blog" meant! We'll also be having trivia contests and online polls. I'll post a thread here for each round and I'm sure the message boards will be buzzing since the second half of Linares will be going at the same time.

The Kreiman saga has another twist. The AF4C hasn't received his player contract yet and they haven't been able to contact him. If you're out there Boris, they need to hear from you! He can't play without signing it, but since the USCF waited so long to decide on whether or not he could play, obviously he gets to the last minute. This makes it tough to have an alternate who might not play. If Kreiman doesn't show, maybe they'll tap an IM we know will be nearby, San Diego's Cyrus Lakdawala.

I was halfway through this item yesterday and forgot about it, closing the browser. Oops. Take 2. I'd have these notes up a lot quicker here and at ChessBase if the players would stop playing these tough endgames. Another couple of games like this and I'll be desperate for a few 20-move draws. Nah. Leko leads alone after a short draw with Bacrot. (28 moves but only seven of them new.)

This time it was Aronian-Svidler and Radjabov-Vallejo causing trouble. Svidler has been playing very well, but he imploded in this endgame. It was tough already, but 30..f5 turned it into a forced loss. Quite the hallucination. 37..Be8 lost instantly, but it was already doomed. I posted some raw analysis in the round 4 item Lots of pretty stuff. Radjabov's game with the Spaniard was a wild one. White had a good attack going, then black had a good attack going, then it was an endgame draw. Fun tactic with 29..Ne3+ if 30.Kxh3 Rh6 mate!

The Evil Ivanchuk showed up in round five. He was completely overrun with white by Topalov, who is now one win away from an even score. Really a pathetic game. Kasparov and I talked about the games and he was beyond disgusted. Even worse, Ivanchuk got into serious time trouble and had to make seven moves in seven seconds. Not a recipe for success. Garry pointed out this cool line: 29.Qh1!? with the idea of Qh6 if Black playes the natural 29..Nd2. After that White can force an amazing draw. Or win after 30.Qh6 Rxc1? 31.Ndf4!! If I have time I'll put an item with more analysis and Kasparov comments up at ChessBase today. Lots of action in the message boards today for a weekend.

Will the real Veselin Topalov please stand up? For a while I wasn't sure. Svidler played a brilliant game to beat him in the first round, and I'm not at all convinced that the Berlin is to Topalov's taste. Then he came very close to making something from nothing against Bacrot. In round three he completely outplayed Aronian and was on his way to a well-deserved win with black when time trouble (and Aronian's alertness, to give some credit) struck and he had to salvage a draw. A little rocky, but no reason to panic.

Panic! Topalov lost to Radjabov's King's Indian in round four in a truly ugly game. Granted, Radja is no sissy and counts black wins against Kasparov and Anand in his oeuvre, but this really looked like something was wrong with Topalov's radar. And he knows these positions, having been a Benoni man for most of his career. The kingside storm had the stench of desperation. 20.g4 is such a dog it could hump your leg. As always, full props for being aggressive in an equal position, but that was pretty ugly. I'm assuming he missed the cute 26...Nh5! He could have bailed out with 27.Rxf8+, but kept looking for more and went down. Again, give credit to Radjabov for ruthless precision, but this was mostly self-inflicted. (And how about that KID!? Refuted indeed.) This puts the world champ in the cellar with -2 and out of the running for anything but pride.

Yes, there are still many rounds to play, 10 of them to be exact. But Leko and Svidler are tearing things up with 3.5/4 scores. Leko nabbed a pawn against Ivanchuk and converted quickly. Svidler took more time to grind Bacrot in a superior rook endgame well worth study. I'll be at Playchess.com in a minute watching the round five games while on the phone with the world's highest rated guest...

The two 32-player groups are up now at the official US Championship site. February 2006 USCF lists used, I understand. Only six days to go!

Wow, what a game. Thank Zeus that Topalov has more grit than the rest of the field put together. At the very least he played many more moves than the rest of the field put together today, and then some. He and Aronian battled for 123 moves, the last 70 of them in a theoretically drawn N+2 vs R endgame that Topalov defended without adventures. The insanity came earlier and it came in waves.

Topalov gained the initiative in the opening when Aronian, to his credit, wanted to play for a win after being surprised by 18...a5! Taking on a6 should be fine, but 19.Be4 is dubious. White got out of trouble with a creative temporary exchange sac but seemed to lose the thread. I thought the point was to play 24.Bxb7 and White gets the exchange back or a strong b-pawn. Topalov had an extra pawn and all the chances at that point, especially when Aronian selected an absolutely bizarre defensive plan, part of which was blitzing out his moves. The entire scheme 27.Rd1 28.Rd4 29.g3 looks ridiculous to me. g3 against a light-squared bishop?! Anyway, it was exciting, fighting chess on both sides.

Topalov was breaking through and just about to put White away when Aronian's blitz tactics paid off. On move 35 Topalov mouse-slipped his f-pawn (well, you get the picture). Instead of the deadly 35...f5 he played 35...f6? allowing a miracle perpetual check sac. Aronian pounced and then the final twist. Instead of retreating to f8 with a likely draw, Topalov ran his king into the open on the final move of the time control with 40...Kd7??. Suddenly White was winning, or close to it. The game ended up in a tough N+3 vs R+1 endgame that Topalov managed to draw. (57...f5+! is a joy.) It looks like White must have a win in there (55.Nf5, eventually winning the f-pawn looks good), but it's not as easy as it looks. Whew. Comments from Kasparov will be at ChessBase later today. (He was brutalizing Aronian's strange play so I'm glad he went to bed before Topalov blundered and almost lost!)

By the way, speaking of annoying endgames that should be won, nobody has answered my plea for a winning line in Vallejo-Leko from round one after 34.Kd3 instead of 34.Bxh5? It's weird that a rook and passed a-pawn don't win trivially, but providing a variation hasn't been easy. A few lines: 34.Kd3 Re5 35.Kc4 a6 (35...h4 36.Kb5= c4+ 37.Kxc4 a5 38.Kd4 Re2; 35...Kh7 36.Kb5=) 36.h4 (36.g3 Kh7 37.h3 Kh6 38.h4 (38.g4? h4) ; 36...Kh7 37.g3 Kh8 38.Bxh5 Kg8 39.Bg6 Kf8 40.g4 Re4+ 41.Kxc5 Rxg4 (41...a5 42.g5 a4 43.Kd5 Re1 44.f6 gxf6 45.gxf6 a3 46.e7+ Rxe7 47.fxe7+ Kxe7 48.Bb1 Kf6=) 42.h5 (42.Kb6?? Rxg6!) 42...Ke7 (42...a5 43.Kd6 Rd4+ 44.Ke5 Rd1 45.h6=) 43.Kb6= Ra4 44.Kc5 a5 45.Kb5 Ra2 46.Bh7 a4 47.Bg6 Ra1 48.Kb4 Kd6 49.Bf7 Rf1 (49...a3 50.Bg6) 50.Kxa4 Rxf5 51.Kb4

I don't have the official statement from the USCF yet, but they have decided not to prohibit GM Boris Kreiman from playing in the US Championship, which starts on March 1 in San Diego. Follow the story here, here, and here. I'll have the final player groupings up today at the official site.

I doubt we've heard the last of this. The USCF is one thing; organizers can do as they like. It's not at all clear to me whether the AF4C could, if it wanted, reject Kreiman's participation. Anyway, now that this specific incident has passed, what's to be done in the future? To accusations that they sing castrato the USCF and AF4C can claim they didn't have anything in writing to give them the authority to reject a participant on these grounds, making them legally vulnerable. Language needs to be added to the participant contract that allows for rejection on grounds of bringing the game and/or the event into disrepute. (Similar to the clause that allows Nike to dump Kobe Bryant when he's accused of a crime.) A panel and an appeals system should be part of it to avoid witch hunts.

A second straight round of ferocious chess in Morelia. Three decisive games again, though with some uneven play. Leko and Svidler lead with 2/2.

Vallejo Pons-Svidler 0-1, Topalov-Bacrot 1/2, Ivanchuk-Aronian 1-0, Leko-Radjabov 1-0

I had the luxury of watching while on the phone with Kasparov, who is staying up way past his bedtime to watch the games. I'll include some of his comments in the next ChessBase report. He has been impressed with Leko, who outplayed Radjabov in a line they both specialize in today. The game finished explosively as Radjabov tried to find a tactical way out. 36.Qc4 was a star move.

The relentless Topalov was held by Bacrot, although it looked a lot harder than it seemed it would be. With just four pieces on the board Topalov played on and made it interesting. Bacrot collapsed against Topalov in an equal endgame at Corus and came close to a repeat performance. Vallejo Pons won the draw to start out with two whites and has been blown out of the water right out of the opening in both games. His new try and follow-up against Svidler's Grunfeld was, in Kasparov's succinct summation: "pathetic." It's in the same country, but Cuernavaca it ain't. Ivanchuk bamboozled Aronian in trademark fashion. The knight trek Nb4-Na6 is a classic.

Some player comments translated from the local paper:

That last is curious. I imagine the only reason you wouldn't expect 9...Bf5 is because of 10.g4. But Vallejo didn't play it until the next move, when it was too late. During the game Kasparov wondered "why play h4 if you aren't going to play g4?" Bad preparation and worse reaction.

Broadcast at Playchess seems to be going okay after initial delays and the usual trauma on-site in Morelia. If you aren't cool enough to go there, linares.soloajedrez.com is running a java board broadcast that seems stable so far.

Below the jump (moved to save space and bandwidth) is a screen shot from the spiffy new Fritz 9 Playchess interface with the Linares games in progress. Four boards at once, chat on all boards, pretty cool. You can't copy the moves in multi-board view, however. But when viewing just one game at a time you can just copy the moves ctrl+c or edit-copy.

R1: Svidler-Topalov 1-0; Aronian-Radjabov 1-0; Vallejo Pons-Leko 0-1; Bacrot-Ivanchuk 1/2

Topalov went with the Berlin (groan) he essayed in San Luis to fine effect. Svidler answered sacrificially and achieved an ingenious bind. Topalov had to give back material to survive and went further downhill in time trouble. Radjabov made it through a King's Indian alive but also lost the endgame. Vallejo Pons was out-prepared in a sharp Nimzo line. Bacrot-Ivanchuk started dull but heated up. Ivanchuk missed great winning chances in the endgame. I'll have some light notes and a few comments from Kasparov in tomorrow's ChessBase report.

Event arbiter Jonathan Berry is posting the pairings to the Gran Torneo Abierto Mexicano Ciudad de Morelia (currently underway) at his own site. (or www.tinyurl.com/cymdf). As we can see from the Linares site, la internet isn't exactly a priority for the organizers. But don't go dissin just the mariachis; remember that Dortmund declined to show the games live last year.

But wait, what's this I see?! The Spanish Linares site is up and running with this year's event. Since El Fred is there in Morelia, ChessBase will still be the place to go though. I'm sure all the usual suspects will be running the games live if the broadcast in Morelia works, which doesn't seem to be a sure thing with the first round games just minutes away. The Spanish site's "live games" link goes to Playchess so there might not be a web broadcast at all. Feel free to post results below as they come in if you're watching live.

I finally posted our Q&A with everyone's favorite candidate for FIDE president. The "to do list" in the first question are vague boilerplate ("Better management of resources available"? Brilliant!), but most of the answers have real meat on the bones. Nice to hear an excoriation of the 90'+30" control, even if it's what so many of us have been saying for a long time. Vote early, vote often.

Qué onda, vato?! The Wimbledon of chess is putting its fresas in the crema this year, splitting into two parts and starting out with the first half in Morelia, Mexico. I've been to this pretty town quite a few times over the years, a pity I'm too swamped with work to make it down for the show. El Fred is there for ChessBase. I'll be chipping in with some live audio commentary at Playchess in a mix of Spanish and English when time allows, assuming they can get the live moves out and assuming I can get the broadcast encoder thingy to work.

As far as I can tell, this embarrassment of html is still the official site. I had no idea you could train squirrels to design web pages, but there you go. The players: Topalov, Leko, Svidler, Ivanchuk, Aronian, Bacrot, Radjabov, Vallejo. Double round-robin. peach's message board poll had Topalov as the prohibitive favorite, garnering over 50% of the vote. Ivanchuk was a surprising second, followed by Svidler and Leko.

It's hard to disagree with the Topalov pick. I'd take him versus the rest of the field for a share of first at two to one if I were a betting man, which I'm not. Other than that I'm interested in seeing if Leko can get his pawns out of his ears. The way he's been playing lately I'd rather watch ice prancing, or whatever it is they're doing in Italy. Radjabov has been under the radar for a while. No longer a kinder, he needs to push his rating up to get back on the invitation gravy train. The ever-unpredictable Ivanchuk will play his 4th and 5th games against Aronian in as many months. Right now it's +2 -1 for Chukky.

According to various Mexican and other LatAm newspapers, there was an opening shindig last night for the drawing of lots. The players lifted up giant chess pieces to reveal the numbers. (Vallejo Pons 1, Svidler 2, Bacrot 3, Aronian 4, Radjabov 5, Ivanchuk 6, Topalov 7, Leko 8.) The full pairings are up with opening ceremony pics now. The mayors of Linares and Morelia were there. Eight of the ten sports items in the local Morelia paper are about chess, either Linares or the concurrent open. It runs Feb. 18-26th in Morelia and then March 3-13 back home in Linares. By then I'll be in San Diego for the US Championship.

Some translated press conference highlights from Topalov in the local paper:

Just stumbled onto a comment from Leko in which he says "last year was a great one for Topalov, but this year can be the end for him because I feel sure I can win the Linares tournament in Morelia." Good to hear him sounding cocky.

I assume Frederic will be including such things in his onsite reports at ChessBase in the future, but of course it's usually much harder to get any work done when you are on site.

There are only two rounds left to go in this massive display of chess power, the Aeroflot Open. (An entirely absurd website, yet again.) Yet another Ukrainian is in the lead, 23-year-old Pavel Eljanov. (Did you notice that three of the players in the Cuernavaca young masters event were Ukrainian? Only Azerbaijan has similar junior power.) Eljanov is a true open warrior, traveling Europe the way American GMs go from Vegas to Philly and back. His 5.5/7 may not hold up considering the array of Elo right behind him. Top seeds Mamedyarov, Akopian, and Sasikiran are in the group on 5.

Doug pointed out that among these heavyweights is Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the 15-year-old French hope. He's the 84th seed in the Aeroflot but he's on an impressive run. He hasn't lost a game and he has wins over Akobian, Sadvakasov, and Naiditsch. France has a former "youngest GM ever" in Bacrot, who hit the top ten last year. Without Vachier-Lagrave France has six players in the top 100. For comparison, Germany and England have just two each, the Netherlands has four, the USA has five (four active). This happened just when the strong French events Cap d'Agde and Enghien les Bains have disappeared (?). C'est la vie!

Maybe I'm not the only one who is confused here, but now the arbiter is saying that Vallejo Pons won the title on tiebreaks ahead of Ponomariov. The official site says they are using Koya for the first tiebreak. This means best score against those with 50% or better. The arbiter's results page (thanks to Seppe) even lists Vallejo Pons with Koya 5 to Ponomariov's 4. But a quick glance at the crosstable shows Ponomariov scored 3.5/5 against those with 50% or more (three draws and wins against Bruzon and Volokitin) and Vallejo Pons scored 2.5 (five draws). Those should be their Koya scores.

I don't really care much about system tiebreaks, but what's up? None of the Koya or Koya Extended instructions I can find provide any way it would be possible to alter this, or to produce scores of 5 and 4, unless I just can't read the instructions. (Wouldn't be the first time. My IKEA bookshelf first turned into a scale replica of the Eiffel Tower.) Koya goes from the 50%+ group on down, seems simple enough. Can someone please confirm that I've lost my mind or that the wrong guy took the trophy home? Maybe the Spaniard got a 5 from the French judge.

[Update: Organizer GM Sisniega has spoken to arbiter Zaragoza, who recognizes that he got the numbers wrong. "Ponomariov was definitely first and Vallejo second. Fortunately, the prize money was split evenly and there was no trophy involved. Zaragoza will be issuing an apology shortly." I guess it's still possible I've lost my mind, but not about this. At least no harm was done. I was just curious because I announced Pono as the tiebreak winner the other day.]

Wheeeee! Taken from the top of my front porch here in Brooklyn. I'm not going down the snowy steps in my slippers just to get a better photo.

Open thread, questions, topic suggestions, complaints to the management, shout-outs to peeps, best wishes to players, happy thoughts...

Sorry for not keeping up with this and various other things. Been terribly busy on another project this past week. Today's snowstorm makes it a good day to stay in and get caught up. First off, this excellent event came to an end yesterday. A blackout in the eighth round interrupted two key games, which had to be continued later at the hotel. (A bus crashed into a streetlight, knocking out power to much of the town.) ChessBase has a final report up now. IM Ocampo Vargas has some detailed color reports up at NotiChess. In Spanish, but you can look at the pics and the notes if you don't habla.

First place was shared by Francisco (Paco) Vallejo Pons of Spain and Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine with powerful +4 scores. These two had by far the most top-level experience in the field. Ponomariov has been playing in supertournaments regularly since winning the FIDE world championship KO in Moscow, 2001. Vallejo Pons, by virtue of his nationality, has been a regular at Linares. They displayed their precocious solidity by going undefeated in a very combative field. They drew with each other in the final round to finish 6.5/9. (According to the rules on the official site, they are using Koya for first tiebreak. That means best score against those with 50% or better scores. This should mean Ponomariov wins the tiebreak, for what it's worth.)

US champion Hikaru Nakamura came very close to their pace by winning in the final round to reach +3 and clear third place despite an earlier loss to Dominguez. He won as many games as the leaders, his four wins including impressive victories over Volokitin and Cheparinov. Nakamura's 2750 performance should add another pile of rating points on the next list, along with his 6/7 at the North American Open. He won his final game over Topalov's second Ivan Cheparinov in the most theoretically dense line in chess, the Botvinnik Semi-Slav. If 19..Rd5 was a product of Topalov Labs, Cheparinov's boss will be glad his second played it and not him.

Karjakin was either tired out by his fine Corus Group A run or Cuernavaca just isn't his town. He lost as many games in this event than he did in Wijk aan Zee! (3, and he was in serious trouble in two others.) It was a good event for the Cubans. Dominguez was by far the more solid of the pair, winning two and going undefeated. Bruzon won his last three in a row and moved to a plus score by beating Karjakin in the final round. The tail-enders unbalanced the event dramatically, unfortunately. The -5 of IM Leon Hoyos wasn't much of a surprise and at least he got a nice win over Volokitin. He missed at least one other win. Argentina's Felgaer collapsed entirely, drawing his first three games and then losing six in a row! Obviously he's not that weak, but he's likely somewhat overrated at 2600. This effect was commonly discussed in Argentine chess circles. A small, isolated group of players can produce players with substantially higher ratings than they would have were they playing regularly against wider competition.

I just posted the regulations and prize fund at the official site. Two groups of 32 players, nine-round swiss system, winners of each group play final rapid match. As mentioned yesterday, the field is complete but the actual pairings aren't up because the Kreiman case isn't resolved yet. "Either before or right after the weekend" is what I'm told.

Wow, once they started drinking the water these guys really got fired up. It was another exciting, gory day in Mexico. 4/5 games were decisive, including wins by the leaders. Vallejo Pons and Ponomariov scored over Karjakin and Bruzon, respectively. They're tied for the lead with impressive 4.5/6 scores.

Hikaru Nakamura bounced back with yet another terribly complicated game. He beat Felgaer with some sweet reorganization to move back to +2 and holds clear third place. For a while their game looked like a contest to see who could get the worse bishop. Nakamura ruthlessly blitzed the Argentine as Black's position and clock deteriorated. It started out with a wacky anti-Sveshnikov, Hikaru pulling 4.a3 out of his bag of tricks. The ever-creative Ljubo Ljubojevic sprang that one on Tony Miles back in 1985. (A game that has one of the most bizarre positions you'll see this year on move 15. White knights on g5 and h7!)

As regularly occurs in Hikaru's games, this one is a good example of using an unorthodox opening without worrying about theoretical superiority, only getting an original position where you can outplay your opponent. White's consolidation and expansion was almost Hedgehog-like. On move 20 White only had one piece beyond the second rank. Contrast this with his ultra-theoretical win over Volokitin. Black Belt readers get to wonder which of his games Hikaru will annotate, although he might not have time before running off to San Diego to defend his title.

Yet again, the official site made the games disappear. They immediately put up the new pairings in the game viewer and the PGN of the day's round isn't up until the next day. Dale, mariachi! Off to copy-paste them from playchess.com again...

And another thing. dcp23 asks in the comments why Cheparinov is playing with a Russian flag on his table. Careful examination of the photos, even checking with Photoshop (yes, these people need more work), shows that the middle stripe is blue, not green. A yellow highlighter should solve the problem.

Or maybe 63. The complete list of 64 players at the 2006 US Championship is ready. The final spot went to San Diego's Elliott Liu, who won the Scholastic Champion of Champions spot in an online tournament hosted by the ICC. Great luck to have a local boy make good.

Then there were the five new replacement / vacant spots. Two spots were left vacant while Polgar, Krush, and Shahade (x2) have withdrawn. Sarkar, Kleiman, West, I. Schneider, and Milman are in. (Bercys replaced Greg Shahade earlier.) Sarkar and Kleiman were the top runners-up on the Grand Prix list. Igor Schneider (not to be confused with Dmitry, who is already in) and Milman are two of the top juniors in the country. West was, in my opinion, a "do the right thing" appointment, since she was the only player to fall under the "50% score required" rule that was created after there was a vacant spot at the National Open.

The only remaining doubt is the status of Kreiman, whose spot is under review after accusations of game fixing, documented here and with considerable related recent discussion here. I believe the case has been handed to the USCF board and they will vote on it in the next few days. I assume his spot would go to the next qualifier from the American Open. BUT, since this seems to be Jesse Kraai, who later got in at the North American Open, he may become the qualifier from the American Open, replaced by the next person down at the NAO! That looks like David Pruess. But I'm not 100% sure of that; it could be Levon Altounian from the AO. Or they could keep Kreiman. Ah, suspense.

After a peaceful start, a lot of blood was spilled for the second round in a row. Unfortunately, some of it belonged to the Dirt home team. US champ Hikaru Nakamura got into a bad bishop vs knight endgame against Dominguez. In the rush to put up tomorrow's pairings, today's games have disappeared from the official site and there's no download link yet, and I'm tired of waiting, so no game comments right now. But if it was possible to hold that I'll be surprised. Just for that, I'm not going to let Dominguez crash at my place when he defects; that'll teach him.

All five games were decisive in round five. Wins by Ponomariov and Vallejo Pons jumped into first place on 3.5/5, ahead of Nakamura and Dominguez with 3. The Ukrainian trio formally abolished any suspicions of Soviet-style truce-making. First Ponomariov beat Volokitin and today Volo beat Karjakin. It's a very balanced event, more of one than expected thanks to Leon Hoyos's defeat of Cheparinov in a Dragon in round four. Hikaru's game against the Argentine Felgaer tomorrow splits my loyalties a bit, but loyalty to the Ninja flag is for true patriots, so I hope Nakamura mashes him.

In his latest annotations for Black Belt, US champ Hikaru Nakamura comments his tournament-clinching final-round win against GM Nikola Mitkov from the North American Open in Las Vegas last December. He starts with a paragraph that catches the eye as much as any of the moves in the game.

You can see from the crosstable link above what good financial sense it would have made for Mitkov to be guaranteed a draw. Hikaru was clearly the agent of karma in this one. I'd heard this sad tale second-hand and there was some float among organizers about banning Mitkov from their events. Dunno if anything has or will come of that.

Revenge was served nice and cold in round two in Mexico. US champion Hikaru Nakamura outplayed Andrei Volokitin of the Ukraine, the man who defeated him in the final of the Lausanne Young Masters last year. I'm not sure it was, as IM Ben Finegold put it, "the most complicated game ever," but it was a great grind. Both sides were loaded with weak pawns and Nakamura did the better job of hitting weaknesses. With his usual fearless calculation he grabbed the exchange and allowed his king to be chased around, coming out on the other side with a winning endgame. He shares the lead with Vallejo Pons, who beat the underdog local player Leon Hoyos.

I'm loving the Sofia rules, although these young guys would fight hard anyway. Playing things out to clearly drawn endgames makes things more interesting for the fans. It also pushes them to find creative ways of continuing on occasion. I'm not sure who would have been trying to win Cheparinov-Ponomariov, for example, but there were many fun twists and turns before the liquidation.

Round 3 update: The only decisive game was Hikaru's methodical win with black over Leon Hoyos, so he leads alone. A remarkable number of draws so far, although quite a few of them sharp and fun to play over. Seeing some offbeat stuff in the openings. Pono's 6.Bd3 didn't get anywhere against Karjakin, who held his countryman off easily.

On September 16, 2004 (Mexican Indepence Day we note, irrelevantly), Irina Krush of the USA played a two-game rapid match against Almira Skripchenko of France in New York City. The venue was the Russian Samovar restaurant in the Theater District. Krush won to go on to play Zhu Chen in Times Square in the "Accoona Women's World Championship." Four months earlier, on May 14, 2004, both players attended a press conference and photo-op at the restaurant. Here's a nice pic of IM Krush that didn't run in my report on the press conference, to which I arrived a bit late.

Larger, uncropped versions here: 800x600 (100kb) / 1600x1200 (334kb)
Free for non-commercial use.

To my knowledge, Krush is the only player who will represent the USA at the 2006 FIDE Women's World Championship starting on March 10 in Ekaterinburg. (Abrahamyan is also listed, however, although I thought she had confirmed to play in the US Championship instead.)

Previous Pic items: 01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05

I'm only rarely up for event coverage, but this looks like a good one. Plus, our main man, US Champion and Black Belt contributor Hikaru Nakamura is in action. I haven't seen pairings at the official site yet, but H-Bomb sent in an email from Mexico to let us know he's going to start with a bang. He's got black against top seed Ruslan Ponomariov in the first round today!

Mexican chess legend and organizer GM Marcel Sisniega helpfully posts below some info of the sort that is lacking at the official site. Muchisimas gracias, maestro.

Games start at 1600 local time, which is 5pm EST, 2200 GMT/UTC.