Cover Story / Nakamura, Krush are champs
GM Alexander Onischuk
GM Varuzhan Akobian
championship. After 121 moves, and com- ing strangely to within ten moves of the 50-move rule in a crowded middlegame, Nakamura found an opening but Len- derman deftly pitched a few pawns to stifle Nakamura’s lone bishop. The game was the sixth longest in U.S. champi- onship history. “I really didn’t want to play another six-hour game today,” Nakamura said. He shortchanged himself—the game with Lenderman was on the precipice of last- ing seven hours. “I just had to move on. You can’t dwell on it.” Nakamura’s return to the championship
followed a one-year hiatus. A resident of St. Louis, he spectated at nearly every round last year and said later that he regretted the decision to sit out. “Although I’ve played in tournaments throughout the world, the U.S. championship definitely tops the list,” he said at the closing ceremony. Now removed from the tutelage of GM Garry Kasparov, who helped convince him to skip the 2011 event, Nakamura played confident, uncompromising chess through- out the 11 rounds. In most games, he forced the action, even when playing black. “When I start going into deep thinks, it’s usually because I’m second-guessing myself,” he said. “I just thought my posi- tions were so easy to play. I didn’t need to spend time.” The decision to play was fraught with
the same risks as last year. Nakamura needed to score 71
⁄2 ⁄2 /11 just to maintain
his FIDE rating, which was at a peak coming into the tournament. By scoring an undefeated 81
, Nakamura won the
title by a full point and gained almost eight points to achieve a post-rating of 2783, just two points short of tying Fis- cher’s all-time American record (there was also the $40,000 payday). Despite the lofty number, Nakamura stated repeatedly that this was not his goal entering the tournament. “If I was focusing on rating, I probably would have done something suicidal.” With GM Viswanathan Anand just barely defending his world champi- onship, Nakamura also eclipsed Anand on the live ratings list. At the time of writing, Nakamura entered the vaunted top five in the world for the first time ever. The U.S. Women’s Championship pro-
20 August 2012 | Chess Life
GM Aleksandr Lenderman GM Yury Shulman
duced arguably more tension and intrigue. Top-ranked IMs Zatonskih and Krush fol- lowed their uneventful round seven draw with two wins apiece against other play- ers in the final two rounds. The sprint finish left them both sitting on an unde- feated 7/9 and a meeting in the final-day tiebreaker. Though both women have openly stated
that they have put their contemptuous 2008 tiebreaker behind them, this would be the first time since then that they have faced off in another one-on-one tiebreaker for the title (combined the duo have won the last six titles, three each). Unlike that game, which ended with Krush flagging after a chaotic and uncivil finish, the twin 25-minute games would offer a five-sec- ond delay from move one to alleviate any replay of the all-out scramble. Pundits predicted Zatonskih’s nerves would hold up better, but she was not pleased with her play all tournament and Krush exuded more confidence throughout the event. Krush said her plan of studying the night before and resting each morning of the tournament was meant to preserve the “nervous energy” required to play her best chess. Counting games of all time-controls, the two ladies have gone head-to-head more than 20 times, with greater than two-thirds of the games producing a win- ner. In game one, Krush offered the first wrinkle with 1. ... g6. She said she pre- pared by following a game Zatonskih played in 2005 in which Black got a com- fortable game. Asked afterward about her knowledge of the opening, she said, “The Modern? Is that what it’s called? I don’t really play this stuff.” Later, she oscil- lated her queen between b6 and c7, which turned out to be a clever psychological play. Though Zatonskih had no advantage and she probably knew it, a player in her situation is compelled to play on and not waste her one game with white. Zatonskih decided to avoid a repeti-
tion, but used up more than half her time before she entertained a dubious plan of advancing her kingside pawns. Eventually she ceded both the time advantage and attack to Krush. The move 24. ... Ne4 came as a blow to Zatonskih. “I’m 100 percent sure she missed it,”
GM Ray Robson
Krush said. “I knew I took over the initia- tive.” With twin rooks on the second rank and a queen leering ominously on f3, Zatonskih allowed her time to run out instead of seeing which checkmate Krush would choose. Krush pointed out that she can sacrifice her queen on g3 and mate with the rook tandem. “It’s a beau- tiful mating idea. Otherwise I’ll take the h3-pawn, I’ll take the g4-pawn and I’ll denude the king.”
Caro Kann Defense (B15) IM Anna Zatonskih (2510) IM Irina Krush (2457)
2012 U.S. Championship (Playoff, 1) Notes by Krush We drew colors for this game about fif-
teen minutes prior to its start. I was happy to start with black, because I felt that our black preparation was quite orig- inal and even quite likely to appear on the board. If things go well for Black in the first game, they acquire a tangible psycho- logical advantage for the second game (even if the score is tied.) It’s hard for White not to feel some pressure to make something of their color, and that puts them in danger of overpressing. So given all this, drawing black was a considerable piece of good luck.
1. d4 g6 I had a successful outing with this
move in a must-win situation with Camilla the previous day. However, as I’m not a 1. ... g6 player, it was safe to assume that not a lot of attention would be paid to this possibility. Moreover, it’d be impossible to guess the logic behind it, so honestly a person could sit and prepare for 1. ... g6 all day, and they’d still have no idea what I’m going for.
2. e4 Camilla, being a pure 1. d4 player,
went for 2. Nf3, trying to steer the game into regular g3 King’s Indian Defense (KID) positions. Anna also plays g3 against the KID, but the big difference is that for most of her life, Anna was a 1. e4 player. Given something not too principled like the Modern, where it’d be hard to imagine there is anything particularly
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