For Immediate release
Media Contact: John Henderson
847-347-9593
St. Louis, MO May 10, 2009: It's the big clash of the contenders and rivals in round three of the 2009 U.S. Chess Championship at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis, with the early top board pairing of the defending champion, Yury Shulman from Illinois, and the #1 seed and favorite for the title, Gata Kamsky from Brooklyn.
The top two are on full points and leading the chase for bonus $64,000 Fischer Memorial Prize for any player with a perfect sweep of 9-0. The prize is in recognition of the phenomenal feat of the late American world champion Bobby Fischer, who won 11-0 to take the 1963/64 title - the only player in the long and distinguished history of the U.S. Championship to win with a sweep.
The only other player on full points and in contention for the Fischer Memorial Prize is the 17-year-old newly-minted American Grandmaster Robert Hess from New York, who in round three plays a grudge match against former U.S. champion and second seed Hikaru Nakamura, also from New York. Last month, the two met in the Foxwoods Open in Connecticut with Hess easily winning and the result counting for his third and final grandmaster norm. Nakamura, who broke every Fischer age group record in U.S. save for that of youngest U.S. Champion, will be going all out for revenge.
The U.S. Championship is being played in a spirit of sportsmanship and professionalism throughout, and this could be witnessed in the pairing between U.S. Women's champion Woman's Grandmaster Anna Zatonskia and Grandmaster Gregory Kaidanov from Kentucky, another of the top seeds.
Due to a minor ailment, WGM Zatonskih, the only mother in the 24-player field on Mother's Day, had to attend St. Louis University Hospital for treatment for a minor ailment. Unfortunately this meant she was unable to play her round three game and would have had to automatically forfeit the loss to her opponent without a move being played - but, in a true act of sportsmanship, Kaidanov - who could easily have claimed a win by default - magnanimously offered to postpone their match-up until the official rest day on Friday, when they will both play catch-up on the day the rest of the field are on a break.
In a footnote to yesterday's round two, local player Charles Lawton discovered the hard way the difference between the standard of play at the U.S. Championship and local tournaments he's more used to ruling the roost in. In a time scramble when he was down to his last 5 minutes, he opted to save valuable seconds by stopping to score his game, only to flagged for an infringement of the rules by chief arbiter Carol Jarecki as she warned him he had to continue to keep a score of the game.
But Lawton lost on time in the ensuing dispute with the arbiter as he tried to keep his score up to date as he fell foul of International FIDE rules (which govern all national championships) and local USCF rules. With FIDE (the French acronym of the governing body of world chess), if you have 5 minutes or less on your clock you still have to keep a score of the game, with USCF rules you do not have to do so.
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