Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So both won in round 1 of the U.S. Championship, and in Nakamura's case it was a very quick win. Nevertheless, neither player is likely to feel satisfied with their performance. Nakamura stood seriously worse coming out of the opening against Conrad Holt, and was perhaps even lost. The key moments came on moves 22 and 25, and it's possible that they formed a single unit. Holt could have played 22.Bh5 (intending Bg6) or 22.Ng2, with a big advantage either way. Instead, he played 22.Bf1?, and after 22...Bd3 23.Bh3 Nc2 24.Be6+ Rf7 played 25.Nf5??, which is pretty nearly the worst move on the board. It's a logical move with a creative idea: if Black plays 25...Nxa1 White's attack smashes through after 26.Nxg7. Unfortunately for Holt, Black has 25...Ne1, which essentially wins on the spot. Black threatens both 26...Qg2# and 26...Nf3+ picking up the queen, and the fundamental problem for White is that retracting the last move with 26.Nh4 walks into 26...Qg2+! 27.Nxg2 Nf3#. Rather than have that combination get published everywhere Holt preferred to give knight checks on e7 and g6 before resigning.
Unlike Nakamura, So came out of the opening in great shape. The problem was that he kept letting his opponent, Daniel Naroditsky, slip away after getting a serious advantage. Fortunately for So, Naroditsky got himself into the soup a third time with the mistaken exchanging combination starting with 32...Nexc4, and this time there was no escape.
In other games, third seed Gata Kamsky got nothing against Sam Shankland, and they split the point after 30 moves. Alexander Onischuk also got nothing with White against Timur Gareev and also eventually drew, but unlike the Kamsky-Shankland game Black (Gareev) had pretty good winning chances along the way.
The other two games finished with a winner. Ray Robson had an easy day against Kayden Troff, whose 19...d5? introduced a long forcing sequence that ended with 28.Bxh1. I have no doubt that Troff calculated to that point, so he must have seriously misevaluated the resulting position. White's bishop pair and queenside pawns proved stronger than Black's rook and kingside pawns, and Robson won pretty comfortably. Finally, Varuzhan Akobian tortured Sam Sevian for a long time, and finally managed to grind out the full point.
In the women's section, the top two seeds also stumbled, but in their games this made an impact on the scoretable. Irina Krush was fortunate to escape with a draw against Sabina-Francesca Foisor, while Tatev Abrahamyan could not be rescued after 24.Qf2? axb4 25.Rxf6??, and she lost to Annie Wang. It's not an auspicious start, but with ten rounds to go there's certainly enough time for her to recover from the defeat. Round 2 is tomorrow.