Two Norms Earned Over Labor Day NYC Norms Event

The 18th NYC Chess Norms invitational took place from August 29 through September 2 at the Marshall Chess Club, with IM Kyron Griffith earning his second GM norm and FM Samrug Narayanan earning his final IM norm and crossing the 2400 FIDE threshold in the process. Coverage of our last event can be read here.

Griffith won the GM A section with a 7/9 score, which was precisely what he needed to earn the GM norm. Below is his second-round victory over a young FM (and IM-Elect):

As the tournament raged on, IM Robert Shlyakhtenko was keeping pace with Griffith. His win over an experienced grandmaster in round six is a nice example of the form he was in. The following position after only 13 moves was unusual, to say the least:

The position in Shlyakhtenko – Paragua after 13. Ra2 (a novelty, of course)

By the penultimate round, Griffith was sitting on a 5½/7 score and Shlyakhtenko was only a half-point behind. In their head-to-head game, Shlyakhtenko tried an offbeat variation against Griffith's Semi-Slav Defense in order to keep his hopes of a GM norm alive. Instead, Griffith emerged victorious in a fantastic brawl:

Also in the GM A section, Narayanan earned his final IM norm (and the final few rating points!) with an impressive 5½/9 score. Here is his fourth-round win over Putnam. Can you find Narayanan's winning move here?

Position after 24. ... Qd3 in Narayanan – Putnam. Find White's best move!

Although the "heroes" of the GM A section were the norm earners, there were still plenty of interesting games played by all the players. For example the following positional domination by Putnam against the very solid and strong GM Oliver Barbosa.

Despite Barbosa's loss in the above game, he still finished tied for second with Shlyakhtenko with a 6/9 score. All results from this section can be found here.

In the IM B section, IM Mykola Bortnyk won with 5½/9. Also in this section, Bryan Enming Lin crossed the 2300 FIDE threshold and earned his FM title.

GM Michael Rohde, IM Justin Sarkar, and FM Joshua Colas were the top-scoring Masters in the Scheveningen C section with 7½/9 apiece. Max Mottola was the top-scoring Challenger with a 5/9 score.

GM Andrew Tang was the top scoring Master in the Scheveningen D section with 6½/8. IM Josiah Stearman was the top scoring Challenger with 6½/8.

This was our 18th Norm Invitational with 46 total norms achieved. The organizer was IO Keith Espinosa, and the arbiters were FA Greg Keener, FA Carlos Chavez. Our next events will take place on the following holiday weekends: November 7-11, January 16-20, and February 13-17.