Double-Round Days Begin In Middleton

That’s a lot of chess! Tuesday was the first of two double-round days in Middleton for participants of the national state invitationals and the 7-day schedule of the U.S. Open, with another double-round day already underway today (follow live here).

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The 5-day schedule for the Open also begins today with two rounds this afternoon before tomorrow’s triple-round day. Those who opted for the four-day schedule are already resting up for Thursday’s quadruple-round day! All playing schedules can be found here.

Between the five invitationals, only 14 players out of 250 made it through Tuesday with perfect 3/3 scores. In the Open, 20 players (out of 238) entered this morning’s fourth round unblemished.

WGM Sabina Foisor certainly did not skimp on her highlights for today, pulling from her favorite moments from yesterday’s stream. If you haven’t been following along live, I strongly recommend heading over to Twitch right now! This report will wait for you, I promise.

Irwin

It’s South Carolina’s IM Alexander Matros with the white pieces against GM Alex Fishbein in the battle of the only 3/3 scores in the Irwin.

Matros’s Tuesday began by escaping some danger against South Dakota’s Nels Truelson, but it ended a bit early after his third-round opponent was not so lucky after an early error:

Fishbein’s hot streak continued with fine play against Iowa’s Valeriy Kosokin in round three:

Top-seeded IM Stuart Rachels of Alabama was held to a draw by IM Timothy Taylor (CA-N) last night after barely eking out a win Tuesday morning:

Taylor joins Rachels, FM Robby Adamson (AZ), and FM Doug Eckert (Missouri) in the group of players a half-point behind the leaders.

With the grueling schedule of these events, nobody is going to finish at the top of the standings without a little help from their opponents, as was the case in Taylor’s second-round game:

Denker

As in the Irwin, only two perfect scores remain in the Denker, with IM Eric Li (CA-N) taking the white pieces against IM Bach Ngo (FL), but their paths to board one could not have been more different.

Last night, Ngo’s game was the last to finish:

In contrast, Li’s could have been the first one to finish after a surprisingly fatal tactical blow on move 11:

It’s still anybody’s tournament, with seven players only a half-point behind the co-leaders. Among them is top-seeded IM Liam Putnam (NY), who conceded a draw Tuesday morning to Advaith Vijaykumar after the latter player impressed Foisor with quick, accurate technique:

Also in this group is recently crowned U.S. Junior Open champion IM Evan Park, whose games tend to be sharp, entertaining, and open to multiple results, as you will see below.

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Evan Park (L)'s draw with North Carolina's Vishnu Vanapalli was one of the more interesting games of the day (Photo by David Llada)

Haring

In the Haring, four players entered Wednesday with perfect scores: Yangyang Shen (TX), WFM Irene Fei (IA), WIM Omya Vidyarthi (CA-N), and Rebecca Cortez (IL). Shen and Fei are both middle-schoolers, while Vidyarthi is a junior and Cortez a freshman in high school.

In a theme that is sure to repeat itself tomorrow, many of the top boards saw deep endgame struggles where players had to be careful not to make any mistakes with little time on the clock:

Conspicuously missing from this group of leaders is top-seeded FM Megan Paragua (NY), who was unable to get anything out of the opening against Kansas’s Ananya Wadhwa despite the almost-400-point discrepancy in the players’ ratings.

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Ananya Wadhwa (R) held top-seeded Megan Paragua to a draw to shake up the Haring standings (Photo by David Llada)

Paragua and Wadhwa are the only players with 2½/3 scores.

Barber

Marcus Zheng (MI) emerged from Tuesday as the only sole leader of any of the invitationals.

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Marcus Zheng (R) entered Wednesday as the sole leader of the Barber (Photo by David Llada)

As readers should expect, he reached this position thanks to coming out on the better side of a tense endgame:

Seven players trail Zheng by a half-point, including top-seeded Siddharth Singh (TX), who took a half-point bye in the first round.

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Oscar Izzy Williams (L) faced tough competition Tuesday, being held to draws in both of his games (Photo by David Llada)

But two of the other top seeds — Oscar Izzy Williams (FL) and Roshan Sethuraman (AZ) — are already further back in the standings after yielding multiple draws apiece on Tuesday. Even with promising positions, sometimes the right moves are not so obvious, as Foisor demonstrates:

Rockefeller

Five players made it through Tuesday unscathed in the Rockefeller: FM Ted Wang (WA), Santhosh Ayyappan (NJ), Shawn Xu (MA), Harvey Hanke (IN), and FM Linxi Zhu (NY).

With only two display boards for this section, we have yet to see the games of most of the co-leaders, but this will change today. But what we did see from both Wang and Zhu involved — you guessed it — endgame magic!

Did somebody say magic?

Between yesterday’s rounds, the Rockefeller participants were treated to a magic show from local maestro James the Magician. After a show full of audience participation, we’ll have to make sure nobody pulls an extra rook out of their sleeves during today’s games.

Open

The top of the leaderboard remains mainly unchanged after Tuesday’s second- and third-round games in the seven-day schedule of the U.S. Open, with GMs Mikhail Antipov, Jianchao Zhou, Joshua Friedel, Varuzhan Akopian, and Rahul Srivatshav headlining the group of 20 players with 3/3 scores. A sixth GM, Harsha Bharathakoti, has 2½/3 after taking a half-point bye for the first round, but appears to be re-entering in the five-day schedule alongside IMs Sam Schmakel and Justin Sarkar.

Of their games, Antipov’s second-round victory was my favorite, showing off some sharp play in one of my favorite variations against the Najdorf Sicilian:

The biggest upset on the top boards of the Open so far came last night when Mulan Zhang (1935, MI) took down Andrew Titus (2384, MN) in impressive fashion:

But Anshul Shetty (2220, IL) almost gave Titus competition for this “honor,” needing over 100 moves to put away Siddharth Santosh (1794, GA) in round two after coming back from Santosh’s blistering attack. The full game is absolutely worth a play-through:

In addition to today’s fourth and fifth rounds of the invitationals and seven-day schedule of the Open, the first two rounds of the five-day schedule begin this afternoon. We’ll also have another day of quads (yesterday’s results are here) and, for those who don’t want to put their regular rating on the line, the National G/15 Championship. The full schedule for today is available here.

Solutions

Yesterday's report featured three puzzles testing your defensive skills from the top boards of the Open. Below are the solutions.

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