Chess in the Americas
Round 1 of the U.S. Championships took place on Thursday, with top seeds Gata Kamsky, Timur Gareev and Alexander Onischuk all drawing their games - the first two with each other. Ray Robson and Aleksandr Lenderman were the day's two winners, defeating Sergey Erenburg and Joshua Friedel, respectively.
In the women's event Irina Krush won her first game as did third seed Tatev Abrahamyan, but second seed Anna Zatonskih by Iryna Zenyuk. It will be interesting to see how Ashritha Eswaran, the youngest and lowest-rated player, fares. She is 13 years old and a national master, despite her low FIDE rating of 1979, and she rose to the challenge by winning with Black against Viktorija Ni.
A bit south of the United States, the 49th Capablanca Memorial is taking place in Havana, Cuba. As usual, Vassily Ivanchuk is there, as are of course Cuban GMs Leinier Dominguez and Lazaro Bruzon. The very strong but small field was rounded out by Wesley So, Francisco Vallejo Pons and Zoltan Almasi. All three games were drawn in round 1 of this double-round robin.
Reader Comments (1)
I followed the last hour of Ashritha Eswaran's game live and was extremely impressed.
After defending an inferior position, and despite having low time on her clock, she dismissed a safe draw by repetition and played a tricky and difficult to find idea (...e5!) without having calculated everything. After missing a first win, she found a second, difficult one.
Extremely impressive for a 13 y.o. playing in a first US Championship if you ask me !
Will look at her game against Irina tonight (I'm in Europe). I'm curious...