The Daily Update: Shankland Wins the US Junior Championship; Biel, Rybka vs. Stockfish Continue
Congratulations to the allegedly retiring Sam Shankland, who overcame an 0-2 start to win the U.S. Junior Championship in a playoff. In the first game, he beat Parker Zhao with a tactics-intensive attack - not too surprising, as he had White and outrated Zhao by a pretty serious margin. In the finale, he had Black against tournament favorite Ray Robson, but that seemed to go even easier. Robson played the Fantasy Variation against Shankland's Caro-Kann but didn't have much of a clue as to how to handle it. In addition to Black's draw-odds advantage, Shankland also quickly gained a huge time advantage and a superior position on the board as well. Robson did well to get a pawn down ending, but down to seconds whatever last chances he had evaporated after a blunder.
Congratulations again to Shankland, not only for winning but for his fine play and his competitive toughness.
Next, Biel. Rodshtein-Caruana was a short draw and Son-Howell was relatively short as well, but the other games were monsters. So against Vachier-Lagrave went 64 moves before they split the point, and in the longest game of the day by moves (but not by time!) Giri tried for 109 moves but couldn't break Andreikin in a rook and pawn vs. bishop and pawn ending. The one decisive game of the day was a queen ending between Tomashevsky and Negi, won by the former in "just" 94 moves.
Tomashevsky thus catches round 1 winners So and Rodshtein in a tie for first with 1.5/2.
Finally, the Rybka 4 - Stockfish 1.8 match continues. Game 42, reported last night as a win for Rybka, was annulled as it was based on a Stockfish crash. Stockfish drew the replay and finally got off the 15-game schneid by winning game 43. The match thus stands at 25.5-17.5 in Rybka's favor.
There's no Dortmund news, as they had their rest day, but they resume today (Wednesday) at 3 p.m. CET (9 a.m. ET).
Reader Comments (2)
"The one decisive game of the day was a queen ending between Tomashevsky and Giri, won by the former in "just" 94 moves."
That would be between Tomashevsky and Negi.
Fixed, thanks.