Olympiad Players Fall As Caruana, Niemann, Liang Join The Leaders
The 2024 U.S. Championship field has been blown wide open after GMs Fabiano Caruana, Hans Niemann, and Awonder Liang won their respective games against GMs Ray Robson, Leinier Dominguez, and Levon Aronian and have joined leading GMs Wesley So and Sam Sevian on 2/3.
In the women's event, IM Carissa Yip won her third straight game, this time against WGM Jennifer Yu, while WGM Tatev Abrahamyan and IM Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova both won their games to stay in touch with the lead.
Round four of the U.S. Championships starts on October 14 at 2 p.m. ET/20:00 CEST/11:30 p.m. IST.
Round 3 Standings: Championship
Round 3 Standings: Women's Championship
U.S. Championship
Caruana can breathe a sigh of relief knowing his title defense is back on track following his round three routing of Robson. Waking up feeling "ambitious" about his chances of winning the tournament, Caruana opted to play a "very rare line" in the Queen's Gambit Declined that "led to a fight." Caruana did not understate the rareness of the line, as after White's 8.Bf4 the position had only been reached once (Tsvetkov-Rodrigo, 2024).
The middlegame that arose was close to equal but sufficiently imbalanced and it wasn't long before Robson elected to play a rose-colored e-pawn break, allowing Caruana to eventually gain the ascendancy.
In a post-match interview with WGM Anastasiya Karlovich, Caruana expressed that his 2/3 start with two Blacks, considering his opponents, bodes well for his title defense: "I think I've played three of the strongest players in this tournament."
Speaking of one of those players, Niemann has continued walking the walk with a win over Dominguez. In a seemingly innocuous Giuoco Piano, Niemann met Dominguez's 13...Nh5 with the incendiary 14.g4!?.
While engines favored Black's position, Niemann's kingside attack proved too difficult to defend against and Dominguez was dispatched in 36 moves. Niemann would later dub this as his "favorite game in a long time."
With this victory, Niemann's live rating has shot up to 2738 and he is now the fourth highest- rated player in the U.S. Having bowled over five 2700s in 2024 and rising to 15th in the world for the first time, Niemann's participation in super-GM tournaments will surely be on the up tick.
Winning with Black against a super-GM is one of the toughest assignments in chess but after Aronian played the weakening 29.Nf4?, Liang demonstrated that one mistake is all he needs to beat the best, though it did take well over five hours and 97 moves to put Aronian away.
One spectator on YouTube joked, "Legend says Aronian Liang are still playing."
Of the three drawn games in round three, the clash between So and Shankland supplied the gripping moments. The Berlin Defense is not known for being the most thrilling opening but 16 moves in, White missed an opportunity to turn the game into a kingside slugfest. Shankland continued to press until he had a lone bishop on the board with the kings but So held firm.
Four out of five of the leaders will play with the white pieces in round four and with the rest day looming, expect to see every ounce of energy expended on these games. The greatest rating disparity is between Caruana and GM Abhimanyu Mishra (169 points) but the 15-year-old has been unflappable on U.S. Chess' biggest stage so far.
U.S. Women's Championship
Yip's perfect run continued in round three at the U.S. Women's Championship as she slayed Yu's "Dragadorf"/Hungarian-inspired Sicilian Defense. Yu tried to take Yip out of her comfort zone by castling long, a rare sight in almost all variations of the Dragon, and soon found herself fighting to hold on as Yip swung her pieces to the kingside.
A glimmer of hope for a draw appeared for Yu due to time pressure on Yip but in the end, the defending champion's will to win got her over the line. Will Yip be able to add to her five-game winning streak in round four or will GM Irina Krush put an end to her rampage?
Trailing the lead by half a point, Abrahamyan has also had an impressive event so far and in round four she was able to outplay WGM Atousa Pourkashiyan in a rook endgame.
If style points were given out each round then Tokhirjonova would have won them in round four. Desperate to stay in touch with the leaders, the fourth-seed played Tiger's Modern Defense followed by a g6-g5 pawn push on move seven which could have been mistaken for a mouse slip had it been played online.
The gamble paid off for Tokhirjonova who moves to 2/3 ahead of her game against IM Anna Zatonskih in round four.
Relatively uneventful draws transpired in Zatonskih-Krush and IM Nazi Paikidze-IM Alice Lee (Lee celebrated her 15th birthday today) but the other draw, between WGM Thalia Cervantes and FM Rose Atwell, was the wildest of the women's event so far.
Atwell, who has become a reliable narrator on Twitter, summed up the game well...
Today I played WGM Thalia Cervantes in the US Champs. We got a draw. I was black and played the QGA. The game was frustrating because I outplayed her in the middlegame and I was totally winning with an attack on her king (see below). But I ran too low on time. 😒 #USChessChamps pic.twitter.com/klYah4Jc2V
— Rose Atwell (@atwell_rose) October 13, 2024
The live broadcast was hosted by WGM Katerina Nemcova and GMs Yasser Seirawan and Cristian Chirila.
See what happenedYou can follow the games from the U.S. Championships on our Events Pages: Open | Women.
The 2024 U.S. Chess Championship is an invitational classical event that determines the chess champion of the United States. The 2024 U.S. Women's Championship is being held concurrently. Both events start on October 11 and have the same format: a 12-player, 11-round tournament with a $250,000 prize fund for the U.S. Championship, and $152,000 for the U.S. Women’s Championship.
