Three Americans in the top 14!

OK, one of them is a dual citizen who plays for Italy: #10 Fabiano Caruana, who is also the strongest teenager in the world after Anish Giri's collapse.

Hikaru Nakamura and Gata Kamsky both recovered from slow starts at Wijk aan Zee to finish in the top half of the Tata Steel crosstable: Nakamura is now #6 in the world and Kamsky (who truly has solved his Topalov problem) is #14.

Slow start for Americans in Wijk aan Zee

 Big shoes to fill?

After four rounds of Tata Steel Chess, last year's winner Hikaru Nakamura and reigning U.S. Champion Gata Kamsky are both 1½ points behind leaders Aronian and Carlsen.  Macauley Peterson reports at Chess Life Online.  (Teenager Fabiano Caruana, who learned to play chess in Brooklyn but now represents Italy, is only half a point behind the leaders.)

Check out the action Thursday morning: play begins at 7:30 a.m. Chicago time.

November Top 100 in world

ChessVibes looks at the just-released official FIDE rankings. Hikaru Nakamura (#10) and Gata Kamsky (#19) are the top Americans. Teenager Fabiano Caruana (#23) represents Italy in international play, and also holds dual citizenship in the U.S.

Carlsen wins Corus

Carlsen takes a stroll

Here's the report from the organizers' fabulous website.  And US Chess Online has a nice report up, too.

Carlsen overextended against fellow teenager Fabiano Caruana (who plays for Italy, but is also a US citizen).  He bailed out and drew a very ugly knight ending with accurate defense.  Caruana's -2 is an excellent début in a tournament of this caliber.  We now expect Magnus to win every event.

Alexei Shirov played another amazing attacking game against Lenier Dominguez of Cuba.  With two seconds left for each player, Dominguez offered a draw in a position where he was a piece up, yet losing by force by a combination neither player had time to see.  So with another minute on the clock, Shirov would have been the co-winner.  Great tournament for Shirov!

Vladimir Kramnik got nowhere against Karjakin: he too had a great event.

Vishy Anand (who seemed to be playing in Petrosianesque safety-first mode for much of the event) has to be somewhat disappointed with his undefeated +2 score.  But if you're Veselin Topalov looking for a weakness in Anand's game, you've got to be worried about facing Anand in match play.

Hikaru Nakamura beat Sergey Tiviakov demonstrated the power of the two bishops in a beautiful textbook ending (two bishops vs. bishop and knight): his +2 shows he has the potential to crack the top ten very soon.  (Once today's games are rated, Nakamura should move to #18 on the live rating list.)

Corus Round 1

For the next couple weeks, the eyes of the chess world will be on the Netherlands resort town of Wijk aan Zee.

Hikaru Nakamura and teenager Fabiano Caruana (Italy/Brooklyn) are playing in the A section (Carlsen, Anand, Kramnik, Ivanchuk...)  Two fan favorites won in round one: Loek van Wely (over Nigel Short) and Alexei Shirov (over Peter Leko).

Fabiano Caruana

Varuzhan Akobian is playing in the GM-B section....

Varuzhan Akobian

...and  teenager Ray Robson is playing in the C-section, and won his first-round game.

Ray Robson

Kamsky wins Reggio Emilia

GM Gata Kamsky

(from Chess Life Online; Photo: Betsy Dynako)

Congratulations to Gata Kamsky, who just beat GM Almasi to tie for first at the traditional Reggio Emilia tournament.  Brooklyn did very well in Italy: Fabiano Caruana finished equal third. 

More coverage at Chess Life Online.