SAINT LOUIS, May 23, 2010 – Twenty-four players came to the 2010 U.S. Championship with a dream. After nine rounds, all but two players have woken up.
In the most dramatic and meaningful round so far, GM Yury Shulman upset defending champion GM Hikaru Nakamura on board one. On board two, GM Gata Kamsky dug out of a hole, and after his draw offer was refused, he delivered GM Alex Onischuk his first loss in nearly five years of U.S. Championship appearances.
Nakamura played quickly in the opening and sacrificed a center pawn to gain pressure on the kingside. He won a few pawns and pinned all his hopes on advancing his passed h-pawn. But Shulman’s pieces arrived too quickly, and the pawn never seriously threatened Shulman’s position.
“The first mistake was the opening choice,” Nakamura said. “I wasn’t 100 percent prepared.”
“In the opening I had to recall,” Shulman said. “I was having a hard time. Once I played h6 I realized I was back in my preparation. … [The move] h6 was quite a problem for Hikaru to solve.”
In the post-mortem, the players agreed that after 20…Rc8 21. Qd3 Qh7 22. Qh6 was an improvement, when White has a better chance of holding the balance. “It’s probably just a draw,” Nakamura said. “That was the best I have.”
Instead, after the queens remained and Nakamura played 22. f4, his king was too open to last much longer. Shulman’s rook got to the second rank, his queen to the king’s diagonal, and his knight was poised to jump to f5 and g3. “I forgot about these stupid ideas,” Nakamura said.
Shulman said that after his rook got to c2, he found the idea of sacrificing Rxg5 and the only thing that remained was getting the move order right.
