Nakamura Wins The Millionaire Open
More precisely, Hikaru Nakamura won the top prize in the open section of the Millionaire Open; they were plenty of other sections and major prize winners. He was a convincing winner in the final, defeating Le Quang Liem 1.5-.5, winning the first game in great style and giving a charity draw in the sequel from a winning position.
Before that, however, things weren't so smooth for him. The mini-match against Yu Yangyi began well for Nakamura, as he achieved an easy draw with Black in a 5.Re1 Anti-Berlin. In the second g/25', however, he was in real trouble. Had Yu played 27...Qd3 Nakamura would have had a lot of work ahead of him to save the game and the match. He finally escaped, but again got in trouble in the first of the g/15's. It was another 5.Re1 Anti-Berlin, and Yu came up with the interesting 13.c4. Nakamura didn't find the best way to react to this idea and was soon in serious trouble. Again his opponent missed his chance, playing a4 one move too late, and Nakamura managed to draw again. Finally, he broke through in game 4. Yu played the opening rather strangely, going into a Sveshnikov from a 3.g3 Anti-Taimanov(!) a tempo down. Nakamura played very well, dominated the game and won the match.
In the other semi-final Le Quang Liem overcame Aleks Lenderman in two games. In the first game Lenderman was probably alright after the opening. He equalized, I think, but had to play the sharp 16...g5. Instead he chose the very natural 16...Nd6, probably missing 17.Nd4 (with a host of nasty threats), and after that he could never really catch up. Le won a terrific game, forcing Lenderman to win the rematch in order to force a second pair of games. Lenderman got off to a great start, too, and had a big, even winning advantage through most of the early going. His last chance to (probably) win the game was on move 32, when maintaining the position would have left Le with a horrible position. Instead, he tried to force the issue with 32.b4?, entering a tactical morass that Le handled better than he did. Lenderman still had some chances over the course of the game to make a draw, but since that's as good as a loss he kept on pressing, eventually resulting in a second win for Le.
In the final, everything went Nakamura's way. In his white game Le didn't seem to know the line very well, and Nakamura got an advantage that he prosecuted mercilessly. In the second game Le went for tactics, and it rebounded against him. As noted above, Nakamura had a completely winning position when the draw was agreed, sealing the match and the $100,000 first prize. In the consolation match to determine third and fourth places, Yu Yangyi defeated Lenderman 2-0 to take the honors.
There were many other dramatic matches as well for high-stakes prizes; it looked like a fun event. It looks like Maurice Ashley managed to make it fly after all.
Reader Comments (1)
Really agree that they have made it a fun event. Kudos, especially, to GM Hess as commentator, for paying equal attention to the lower rated matches as the top boards the last couple of days. There were some exciting games going on, and it was nice to hear commentary on these games that was not condescending. It was also cool that they interviewed a lot of these players on the last day. Just a nice job overall.
[DM: At first I was slightly irked by how much attention was being paid to the lower-rated boards, and then I realized that this was a very smart business decision. The presence of elite grandmasters is part of what makes it an attractive event, but only a part, and for the tournament to pay its bills it needs rank-and-file players to show up en masse. So including them as stars of the show was very wise, and I'm sure that Maurice Ashley made sure that the commentary and camera teams gave them plenty of attention.]