Wednesday, April 20, 2011

2011 US Championships--round 6

sThe bell lap starts with quite a few players still in striking distance of the semi-finals.

Some players are desperate for a win: Christiansen,  Seirawan, Akobian, Inanov, Robson, Naroditsky,  and Zatonskih. There should be a lot of exciting games today.

In the Women's Championship, the top four go on, and the leading four are at least 1.5 points ahead of  Zatonskih with Krush a whole 2 points ahead (at 3.5 are Foisor, Baginskaite, and Abrahamyan), but the women usually play fighting chess.

Hess is in the lead in group B by a whole point, and Kamsky and Shulman lead group A by 1/2 point.

Shankland and Onischuk are one point behind Hess (who has 4) in group B.

The games:

Naroditsky played the advance variation against Kamsky. 35 years ago, this varation did not have a good reputation, but it seems very popular now. Kamsky wants to play a very solid game and look for Naroditsky to over reach.

Abrahamyan v Melekhina is an open Sicilian, where it looks to me like Melekhina has over reached and Abrahamyan should be able to survive the attack and win the endgame.

Christiansen made a positional sacrifice against Hess's Bogo Indian. Hess should also want to play a very solid game and look for Christiansen to over reach, but that is what one would normally do with black against Christiansen.

Ivanov with an advanced variation against Akobian's French eventually gained a lot of space on the king side, will he be able to push the attack home?

Golettiani and Zatonskih have a very tactical Reti?

Shulman and Robson have a very strange looking King's Indian. Shulman has a nice sacrifice for a near mating attack.

Krush and Zenyuk have a very exciting King's Indian game in the main line 7...Nc6, but Zenyuk's attack fizzles when Krush sacs a piece back, leaving Krush up 3 pawns with a safer King.

Seirawan played his usual positional game and Onischuk chose to get double isolated d-pawns, I think with the idea of removing c4 and e4 as outposts for white's knight. Seirawan. Will Seirawan be able to create a second weakness and work them for a win?

2 comments:

  1. Sierawan - Seirawan. We all know who you are talking about, but still. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ouch, the first comment on my blog, points out a goof.

    I will fix it thanks.

    ReplyDelete