US Championship, Round 1 Pairings (And a Reminder)
Friday, May 14, 2010 at 1:16PM
Dennis Monokroussos in US Championship 2010

Here are the pairings for round 1:

1. Stripunsky - Nakamura

2. Kamsky - Robson

3. Benjamin - Onischuk

4. Shulman - Bhat

5. Finegold - Akobian

6. Lenderman - Khachiyan

7. Yermolinsky - Ehlvest

8. Hess - Shankland

9. Kraai - Shabalov

10. Christiansen - Gurevich

11. Krush - Kaidanov

12. Kudrin - Altounian

(The higher-rated player has Black in the odd-numbered games and White in the evens.)

This is a seriously strong event, with former champions even in the bottom half of the draw. (It's not strong by the standards of some former Soviet countries, but except for Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan it looks pretty good.)

The games start at 2 p.m. St. Louis time/3 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CET, and my live commentary on the Playchess server (ChessBase/Fritz's online server) an hour and a half into the games, so that's 3:30 p.m. in St. Louis, 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time and 10:30 p.m. Central European Time. (Again, it's free for Premium Members, which is basically anyone who has bought Fritz 12, Deep Fritz 12, or a year's membership on Playchess.)

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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