2009 US Championship Summary&Recap Part I

May 19, 2009 • General

As promised, I will attempt to finally write a blog characterizing my feelings and experiences from a truly remarkable event and probably the best I have played in many months. Although I would have liked to have blogged sooner, I was sleeping until close to noon today when I did an interview with the local New York area based WCBS area reporter Tony Aiello. The clip was supposed to have aired at 6 PM, but as it has not I assume it will be on the 11 PM news for those of you in the New York area.

I will attempt to recap this round by round and my feeling before/during/after. This should be particularly enlightening for the first few rounds as I did not comment either on Chess.FM or in the analysis room where GM Emil Sutovsky and WGM Jennifer Shahade both did a phenomenal job. However, before I get into the nitty gritty of the tournament itself it goes without saying that everyone associated with the Saint Louis Chess Club did a phenomenal job in the organization. I would like to take an opportunity to thank the staff including Tony Rich, Nick Heard, Lauren Smith and Joy Bray along with everyone else who provided all the players with a pleasant and relaxing atmosphere. Of course, none of this would have been possible to begin with had it not been for the incredibly generous contributions of Rex Sinquefield. I have long felt that chess has been overlooked compared to other games and sports. However, Rex brought back a lot of the prestige to the US Championship and American chess which has been lacking for some time so I’d just like to thank him once again for everything which he did and continues to do for the Saint Louis Chess Club and scholastic chess as well. Hopefully in a few years there will be some new emerging junior players with exceptional talent from Saint Louis.

Round 1: At last it begins…

In the first round I was paired with Grandmaster and 4-time US Chess Champion, Alex Shabalov. I strongly suspected that I would be paired against Alex a few weeks in advance, however, I wasn’t totally sure so I did not begin any special preparation ahead of time. When I arrived in Saint Louis the day before the tournament began and I started looking at Alex’s games, I concluded that getting White in the first round would be preferable both against him as well as having an extra white out of the nine games. Fortunately for me, at the opening ceremony GM and defending US Champion Yury Shulman drew white which meant that I would get white as well due to his fourth seeding.

As far as the game itself was concerned, Alex was one of the very few participants who along with seemed extremely adept at playing many different openings. This makes him an extremely hard player to prepare for. We have played many times and it seems that we both run very streaky against each other. For instance at the start of 2007 Alex went on a streak beating me twice in both Foxwoods and the US Championship. Fortunately, I seem to have had his number since then beating him the last three times prior to this matchup. Onto the game itself, I played 1.e4 (shouldn’t be a surprise, I know!) which seemed to surprise Alex a bit, but then he returned the favour by playing the Najdorf which is pretty much the last thing I expected him to play. However, I then played the 6.Be2 variation for the first time in my life as I felt it was quite solid and reduced the odds of an all out tactical melee which has happened a couple of times when we’ve played before. At the beginning of the tournament my second, Kris, and I had a more or less straight forward strategy of trying to angle towards a more solid style of play so as to avoid a usual early tournament meltdown which would require a legendary comeback. Of course, I have pulled this off many times, but it is not easy to do and requires an extreme amount of energy which I don’t always have in my old age! Anyway, the game was pretty standard until the middlegame when I chose a course involving a flank attack to which Alex responded by sacrificing a pawn in the center for counterplay. The result of the complications left me with an extra pawn in an endgame which was not completely clear. However, with both of in time pressure Alex blundered with 29…Ng4? If he had simply chosen a move such as 29…Ra7 activating his rook, the position would have remained extremely unclear. After his blunder, I was able to clean up Alex’s queenside and win handily. This was definitely the start I was hoping for as I really wanted to get off to a strong start and not have to play catch up. Result: 1/1

Round 2: Did someone spike my coffee?

In the second round, I was paired against GM Jaan Ehlvest with Black. Jaan has been a frequent player in the US swisses over the past decade, but I believe it was only a few years ago that he actually changed and became American. What many people may have overlooked is the fact that although Jaan hasn’t won anything major recently, he was once ranked as high as number three in the world behind Kasparov and Karpov. This is no small feat and I viewed this game very much as my matchups with Karpov in Cap D’Agde last fall. I felt like I could achieve something against Jaan, but having Black against such an experienced player, my goal was to simply reach a middlegame and play chess. As fate would have it, this game turned out considerably differently than I expected. After a standard opening, Jaan played 13. Ne5 (Editors Note- I will add some general analysis of all games at a later point involving diagrams) and I went for 13…Qxg2?!?! instead of the standard 13…Qd6 which has been played numerous times by strong players such as Magnus Carlsen. I am not really sure what prompted this madness or bold idea, but I will attribute it to something in my coffee. My sac despite being incredibly bold was actually quite bad. Fortunately, Jaan decided to give back an exchange in a very human manner unlike the computer programs which basically just say I’m an idiot and remain unimpressed by me. Luckily, I was able to achieve a fortress and hold a draw. Although I was under pressure in this game, I never really felt like I was ever completely losing. Overall it was the result I was expecting, but the game took a wild path which was certainly not what I would have chosen if I had the choice! Result: 1.5/2

Round 3: Payback is sweet!

In Round three I was paired against GM-Elect Robert Hess. Coming into this tournament Hess, was coming off a string of recent results which led to his final norms and GM title. In the recent tournament in Foxwoods, we played in the fifth round. Despite achieving a very small advantage, I completely blew the edge and then proceeded to blunder away a draw as well. Hess’s streak did not end here as he was 2/2 beating GMs Christiansen and Becerra. However, I really did not put much stock in the result as Larry was definitely winning at some point in the first game and I felt as though Becerra simply played a very bad line in the Ruy. Nevertheless, I was quite wary after the game in Foxwoods. Whether he intended to or not, I found Robert’s comments about me supposedly not knowing opening quite insulting and I used this as extra motivation to prepare a lot harder and try to crush him in the opening. In the game itself, I once against forayed outside of my usual openings by playing 4.Nf3 in the Nimzo for the first time. This definitely threw Robert off, but he did not forget everything and followed a line he had played before against IM Eugene Perelshteyn with 12…Ba4. I then played the novelty 13.Nb3 which Kris had prepared for me. We reached the conclusion that the line is simply bad for Black and so we gave it a shot. Robert then played 13…Qc7!? which was not the best line in the position. After I played 14.Nxc5! Bxd1 15.Qxb7. I achieved a small but substantial advantage as we headed into the endgame. After nursing my advantage to a winning position, I promptly hallucinated badly with 31.Kg3 allowing massive counterplay to 31…Rb4. Had I simply played 31.g5 the position is close to winning. After a bunch of positional wrangling, I was once again able to obtain many winning chances. Black’s best chance was with 43…Nxc5, however, I still feel that I would have had good winning chances with the two pieces for the rook. After Hess missed this, I converted the endgame relatively easily and won without too many technical problems. Many times in chess tournaments, there are certain people who you feel extra motivated to beat and this was one such case. I very much felt that not winning would have been a huge disappointment, so I was very happy at this point. When Kris and I went to eat dinner after this round at Culpeppers (This became our common night spot in the west end of Saint Louis) we really felt that at this point our strategy was working quite well. Having 2.5/3 after the first three rounds and being tied for the lead was really all I could have expected. I’d also like to point out that at no time during the tournament either before or during did I really consider there any chance of going perfect with 9/9 and winning the $64,000 Fischer Bonus Prize. Result: 2.5/3

Round 4: The “REAL” competition begins.

In the fourth round I was paired against defending US Champion Yury Shulman with Black. Yury and I have played many times over the years. Surprisingly, in our seven previous encounters the result has been incredibly even with five draws and one win for each of us. It was at this point in the tournament that I realized the biggest and most importance stretch was beginning. It seems that there are certain people against whom I always get a specific colour (Shulman,Friedel to be specific). Out of the seven times we’ve played I have had Black five times including the last three prior to this game. In my opinion the only reason Yury isn’t quite as strong as Gata,Alex or myself is that his nerves fail him at critical points and he gets into time pressure too often. If he was able to eliminate these two weaknesses, he’d be capable of results as good as any of us three consistently. In the game itself, Yury played his standard 1.d4 d5 2.c4. Once again, due to our great communication and outside of the box thinking Kris and I came to the conclusion that I’d be well suited playing something outside my usual repetoire (I know, some of you are saying huh, what repetoire!) and we chose to prepare this. Yury deviated quite early, by avoiding his usual line with 4.Nc3 in favour of 4.e3 which is considerably more solid. The next surprise was when Yury played the 7.Bb3 variation as opposed to either 7.Qe2 or the exchange line with 7.dxc5. However, as we were both a little bit outside of our usual knowledge, I figured that this would be more favourable for me. Slowly, but surely, I was able to outplay Yury in the middlegame and obtained an extra pawn and a definite advantage. However, it wasn’t quite enough for me as the opposite coloured bishops made it too difficult for me to setup any real winning chances. With Black against Yury, I would very much have liked to win as it would have put me in great position, however, I was pressing for the win with Black and this is really all any strong GM can expect against another player of the same caliber. Afterwards when I went to the Pasta House, I was decidly annoyed despite the result, but thankfully some people find a way of rationalizing results and I really have to thank Kris for not letting it drive me insane. Result: 3/4

The rest will be following shortly, stay tuned….