All Aboard: Four-Day Joins the Fun on Day Six of U.S. Open

“One tournament, three schedules” is finally ready to become, simply, “one tournament.” After six days at Grand Rapids, the “traditional” schedule is ready to welcome the accelerated six-day and hyper-accelerated four-day players to their one-game-a-day way of life.

In anticipation of the final three rounds, today’s annotations come from award-winning Chess Life columnist WGM Tatev Abrahamyan.

At the top of the leaderboard in the traditional schedule, co-leaders IM Jason Liang and GM Dmitry Gurevich drew, and both boast 5½/6 scores.

The one player who could have caught up, IM Kostya Kavutskiy, lost a tense game to IM Joshua Posthuma, who now leads the pack of chasers with 5/6.

Those who elected to play the six-day are entering their final “two-a-day” day, having played rounds four and five yesterday and preparing now for round six before merging tonight.

After five games, only one player remains unblemished: top-rated GM Andrew Tang. He faced a challenge from FM Sharvesh Deviprasath — fresh out of the Denker — who essayed a fierce King’s Indian Defense and played throughout the game at a blistering pace. He even ended the game with more time on the clock (after the bonus 30 minutes on move 40) than he began the game with, but of course made some errors along the way. While Tang is known for his bullet prowess, he used his time well in this game, getting under ten minutes before move 40 but never being in serious danger on the clock.

GM David Brodsky leads a pack of seven players trailing Tang by a half-point with 4½/5. This group includes GM Alexander Shabalov, FM Brewington Hardaway, IM Ronald Burnett and, most surprisingly, Kansas’s Puwit Sky Morlien. Morlien held Hardaway to a draw in round three, and the 2068-rated player delivered two more upset wins over masters yesterday.

The four-day section still has two more games to play before tonight’s merge. After playing four games yesterday at a faster time control, six players remain perfect. Several of the “usual suspects” remain in this group, including GM Aleksey Sorokin, GM Varuzhan Akobian, GM Viktor Matviishen, IM Bryce Tiglon, IM George Li, and GM John Fedorowicz. Here's a pair of nice games from players in this group:

North Carolina’s Matis Shundi is the one relative surprise in this group, although the 2278-rated player has not yet had to play up.

Only two players trail the leaders on 3½/4: Minnesota master Jackson Wahl and the section’s top-rated player GM Semen Khanin. Wahl held Khanin to a draw in round four despite the 428-point rating disparity between the two players.

Wahl also won the Game-15 championship on Wednesday, scoring 4½/5 to share top honors with Wisconsin’s Hersh Singh. Singh had a nice upset win in round four over IM Justin Sarkar, who finished in a three-way tie for third.

Games from the four-day section are not broadcast on DGT boards until the merge. But round six of the six-day will be broadcast live at 11 a.m. EDT. Streaming resumes for the first merged round at 7 p.m. EDT on Twitch.

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