U.S. Championships, Round 1

The U.S. Championship and the Women's Championship began this afternoon: the only game in progress involves the #1 player in Illinois, GM Yury Shulman.  FM John Bryant is up the Exchange, but Yury seems to have a (tricky) tablebase draw in hand...

After 112...Kc5!, White has no time to take: 113.Rxg4 hxg4 114.Kxg4 (otherwise the pawn queens) 114...Kd6 is a dead draw.

The game continues, so I hope this post is not a jinx.  (Update: drawn in 130 moves.)

Our other local representative, WIM Viktorija Ni, drew comfortably against WGM Camilla Baginskaite

GreenCastleBlock on the Two Knights

Like much of Chicago, I've been home sick with the latest bug. This gave me a good excuse to catch up on Matt Pullin's videos.




The position after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4 Nf6 5.e5 d5 6.Bb5 Ne4 7.Nxd4 Bc5!? is trappy and critical:

White to play: is it OK to take on c6?

Andrew Karklins demonstrated Black's fantastic attacking potential in this 1988 game:

And the following trap shows that White's back-rank weakness exists even in lines when White castles:

And White can resign: 13.Qxc4 Qd1+ 14.Qf1 Bxf2 mates, and 13.Qxd8 Rxd8 threatens mate and attacks the Ba8.

Another good fight

FM Nikhilesh Kumar neutralized Eric Rosen's anti-Grünfeld system and had a pleasant middlegame advantage. But if you have to trade punches with Eric Rosen, try to stay out of the endgame. Very impressive play by Eric!