Round one is Friday at 3pm EDT. Live link. The official site hasn't been updated since the Pleistocene, so I don't know if the pairings have already been done. [They are now up here.] I hope we don't have to fish around for basic info on the ICC, Chess Life, and official sites. I hope someone can do some outreach to the hardcore sites where all details are welcome. An organizer, an arbiter?
A FIFO/blogging format is great for many things, but isn't always best for event coverage. A few static pages for results, pairings, and rules need to be there. With so much going on during the rounds for live coverage, the basics can fall through the cracks. (I clicked on "Tournament Results" and found out Nick Karlow won last Friday's Action Quad. Great job, Nick! Now get the heck off the US Championship page! Yes, I know that menu item isn't directly below the US Ch menu, but still.) With so many people surfing on mobile devices these days, a results page in plain HTML, updated during the round, is essential. A javascript replay is also nice, since most mobile toys can't play Flash or run applets.
Speaking of regulations, can anyone let us know if there are anti-short-draw rules in effect?
[The first round pairings appeared a few hours later here. Yay. Highlights: Ibragimov-Kamsky, Nakamura-Shabalov (! Crazy but true, Shabalov is the 14th seed.), Friedel-Onischuk. My Brooklyn homegirl Irina Krush has black against Kaidanov. Last call to pick your winners. Who will be on the podium? Can anyone crack through the Kamsky-Nakamura-Onischuk power trio over nine rounds? Odds are they won't all three finish with medals, but I find it very hard to pick against them.
Add: After the usual first-round delay, a relay snafu put the wrong names on the boards for a while, but that seems to be fixed. Jennifer Shahade and Emil Sutovsky are on the mic live for ICC Chess.FM. Susan Polgar has posted a big gallery of pics here.
Add: Holy hell, what a mess. The scores were so bad that the official site shut down the live broadcast during the round. And hours after the round finished (it's midnight in NY) the official site still says to check back tonight for PGN. 12 games!! This isn't the frigging Olympiad, people! Don't they still keep scoresheets? It also says the "PNG boards malfunctioned." Eh? DGT? PGN? Sounds more like a PEBKAC problem to me. Apparently nobody was on hand during the round to slap up a free java viewer and manually update and upload a PGN file every few minutes. That's not brain surgery and I'm sure they have enough chess people floating around to relay at least the top few boards.
All the tech experts and bandwidth in the world don't help much if you don't know anything about chess and chess on the web, I guess. I'd like to be charitable, and in fact this is me being charitable, but this is unacceptable. If you don't know how to use the tech, make sure you do a few trial runs, or a few dozen. And have a backup plan. I mean, not that this is an important or prestigious event or anything. The DGT software can be a real pain, I know from experience (and why I let Dutch studs handle it and send me the URLs). But this isn't the Friday Action Quad! We're supposed to be talking about all the great players and the great games, and we can't even see them. The few scores circulating are garbage. About the only one I've seen that looks real is Hess's win over Christiansen. Brilliant stuff from LarryC only to miss a nice counter-shot and go down in flames. PNG PGN after the jump.
[There are some games in Shahade's CLO report. Hey, PGN now up here. Can you please drop the titles in the players' name fields? Hmm, at least one of the scores still has garbage. Ibragimov-Kamsky. 25.Bb4??? is even given in Shahade's report! Come on, people! I know it's late and you're all in a hurry and doing your best, but you're killing us here. America's top-rated player and the game has this gobbledygook.]
Let's really hope we can chalk this up to bad luck and that everything goes smoothly tomorrow, or at least that it survives. The organizers from St. Louis that I had the pleasure to meet in Nashville last month had enough goodwill for a dozen tournaments, so they deserve a mulligan. I'm sure they are trying hard and I don't want to hurt any feelings. But if this happens again the webosphere is going to go from annoyance to laughter, and that ain't pretty. (Just ask Braingames.) Maybe it's something going around the intertubes, since the Azerbaijan vs the World site is five kinds of crappy. The H1Nternet Virus?
[Event "US Ch"]
[Site "St.Louis"]
[Date "2009.05.08"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Hess"]
[Black "Christiansen"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B30"]
[WhiteElo "2545"]
[BlackElo "2681"]
[PlyCount "79"]
[EventDate "2009.??.??"]
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 d6 4. O-O Bd7 5. Re1 Nf6 6. c3 a6 7. Ba4 b5 8. Bc2
g6 9. d4 Bg4 10. a4 cxd4 11. cxd4 Bg7 12. Nc3 b4 13. Ne2 O-O 14. d5 Bxf3 15.
gxf3 Na5 16. Be3 Nh5 17. Bd3 e6 18. Rc1 exd5 19. exd5 Re8 20. Qc2 Qh4 21. Ng3
Nf4 22. Bb6 b3 23. Qd2 Rxe1+ 24. Rxe1 Nxd3 25. Re4 Ne5 26. Rxh4 Nxf3+ 27. Kg2
Nxd2 28. Bxa5 Bxb2 29. Bxd2 Ba3 30. Ne4 Rc8 31. Rh3 b2 32. Rb3 Rc1 33. Rb8+ Kg7
34. Bc3+ Kh6 35. Bxb2 Bxb2 36. Rxb2 f5 37. Nxd6 Rd1 38. Rb6 Rxd5 39. Rxa6 Kh5
40. Ne8 1-0
My take on the U.S. Championship field :
Shulman - continues to be in good form, no reason he should not repeat his result from last year, prediction-1st
Onischuk - also in top form, recently winning the tough Moscow Open, prediction 2nd
Nakamura - out of form in both Foxwoods and Toronto, more likely to withdraw from than win the Championship, prediction 3rd
Kamsky - the strongest player in the field but will yield too many draws w/ black, prediction 4th
Shabalov - the opposite of Kamsky, likely to be the player w/ most wins as black, offset by too many losses w/ white, prediction 5th
Ehlvest - veteran combatant poised for strong showing, prediction 6th
Akobian - tendancy to lose to lower rated players, prediction 7th
Robson - remember the name, will do well if games don't go beyond his bedtime, prediction 8th
Kaidanov - playing too much poker recently, won't be able to bluff the stronger players, prediction 9th
Christiansen - would have been the favorite, 2 decades ago, prediction 10th
Hess - showed he can play with the big boys at Foxwoods, prediction 11th
Becerra - over 2600 (FIDE) in 2008, back under in 2009, prediction 12th
Ibragimov - a spoiler at some point, prediction 13th
Friedel - will beat Nakamura and lose to one of the women, prediction 14th
Benjamin - he still plays?, prediction 15th
Gulko - when is the Senior Open?, prediction 16th
Khachiyan - never heard of him, prediction 17th
Rest of the field - prediction 18th -> last but good idea adding the women, for photo ops....
No agreed draws before move 30.
Daily re-cap video on the US Champ home page:
http://saintlouischessclub.org/US-Championship-2009
Live games will available, including FREE Chess.FM commentary from Jen Shahade and Emil Sutovsky:
http://saintlouischessclub.org/US-Championship-2009-Live
Logon to ICC to see the broadcast analysis board.
RSS feed page brings US Championship news from around the blogosphere:
http://saintlouischessclub.org/aggregator
LOL @ Richard.
Your predictions shows how little you know about these players... Christiansen as 10th!?@ Has larry EVER finished 10th in a field in his life? Even if he doesn't win a sub top 5 finish would be unbelievable....
Bad idea for adding women... shows utter sexism that this entire double date championship was planned just for their double participation. The participants were even lied to told that this luxorious and gigantic club didn't have enough space for two championships.
One is suprised that is still the strongest US Championship ever when you have players like Brooks, Shankland, Krush, Zatonskih, Lawton, Hughes instead of De Firmian, Finegold, Gurevich, Yermolinsky and Lenderman.
for the record mr. Richard... Larry Christiansen won the US Championship in 2002 -7- years ago.
there is 8 former US Champions participating (which had they invited Nick De Firmian (1998, 1995, 1987) and Alexander Yermolinsky (1996, 1993) and Alexander Ianov (1995) could have been 11 former US Champions. Instead we have numerous first time invites (Rating Order)
Gata Kamsky 1991 US Champion
Hikaru Nakamura 2005 US Champion
Alexander Onischuk 2006 US Champion
Yury Shulman 2008 US Champion
Larry Christiansen 3 time (2002, 1983, 1981) US Champion Joel Benjamin 3 time (2000, 1997, 1987) US Champion
Boris Gulko 2 time (1999, 1994)
Alexander Shabalov 4 time (2007, 2003, 2000, 1993)
Completely off topic, but a poster at the crestbook.com forum spotted a Chinese report about this year's Nanjing tournament.
It's going to start on the 27 September and feature Anand, Topalov, Carlsen, Jakovenko, Radjabov (it seems) and one Chinese player. English translation here: http://tinyurl.com/o26phm
In other news FIDE are contemplating the Chechen capital Grozny as a location for the final part of the Grand Prix :) http://www.chessdom.com/news-2009/fide-grand-prix-grozny-oman
Would be great for Grozny I think. I hope they'll get it.
Mishanp -
What's the matter with you? And you too, acire?
The topic is the US Championship. And yet, you both start babbling about something totally different.
And Mig, what's the matter with you for letting this happen? Hello Mig?
Mishanp admitted that his post was off-topic, but IMO it is interesting news after all. Well, maybe Mig could provide a permanent 'open forum' thread where anyone could also post about his favorite (or most hated) player or manager whenever something new or not-that-new appears elsewhere on the Web - though maybe generally he doesn't want to encourage such things!?
The only alternative would be to edit/approve (censor!?) all comments before they appear on the site, I wouldn't want that to happen.
Anyway, replying to mishanp and acirce: It may well be that some players would feel at least a bit uncomfortable playing in Grozny - the situation seems to be relatively 'calm' right now, but this could change at any given moment. So it is also interesting to note that Oman is the other potential GP organizer - did they suddenly find the money that 'evaporated away' from Doha? ,:)
Thomas, there are forums *right here* where people can discuss anything they like.
I don't think it's ridiculous to have a few 2400~ women/young players. These guys aren't useless and they always get a scalp or two. I think tournaments with a more unbalanced field lead to more exciting games. The weaker players have nothing to lose so they play more aggressive, and the stronger ones sometimes feel the weaker are easy targets, so play hard for a win.
mishanp:
"[Nanjing is] going to...feature Anand, Topalov, Carlsen, Jakovenko, Radjabov (it seems) and one Chinese player."
Fantastic lineup. I'm looking forward to it.
Thomas -
So, you apologize for the totally off-topic jabberings of mishanp and acire, and then you continue the off-topic jabbering? Sick.
Anyway, Nakamura - Shabalov should be a big fight. These guys have been going at each other hard for the past few years.
This music is sweet, but will it ever actually be replaced with live commentary?
Ah, if you refresh you'll get the real feed now (or stop and then start).
So, according to the internet radio feed, the names on the games are completely mixed up, so these are games that are being played, but not by the players you think.
The official site is messed up. It has the wrong games on the wrong boards. Too bad.
Fixed now.
Any international sites covering the US championship?
I hope for good international promotion from this event. I am currently in Europe and will be great to see in some site (in English or Spanish) some news.
Luke , take it easy , they bring interesting information to share with the rest of us.
It is not disruptive to read some extra info while checking an article .
And they write off topic very often ,also.
You must accept that what is not interesting for you may be for someone else .
oops , i meant they DONT write of topic very often
MD, I am not sure how to interpret your first sentence ... . My "best guess" is that you are relatively happy with the status quo, i.e. that posts and follow-up posts unrelated to the 'official thread' occur every now and then. So am I actually, and in some cases it is VERY newsworthy - for example, Mamedyarov's cheating accusations were discussed here in (near) real time before Mig even had a chance to write something himself and create a dedicated thread ... .
And as there isn't too much on-topic news for the time being (beyond complaints about the webpage), a bit more about Nanjing: Interesting that the Chinese player is (presently) not yet known - there are several ones to choose from, and whoever gets invited whenever is quite unlikely to decline. Are the organizers waiting to see how Wang Yue performs at MTel? So far, he "failed to impress in his 2009 supertournaments - read: he didn't fulfill the highest expectations and did not (yet) mak another step into the absolute world top.
Thomas, you asked if Mig could leave an "open forum" thread. These forums exist, on this site, under "message boards".
It's not absurd to click an article for a topic and read about that topic.
Thomas -
Can't you stop yourself? You too, Manu. This is the US Championship topic. Go away with that other stuff.
The official site is improving, but it is still making mistakes. For example, the Ibragimov - Kamsky game I was just watching showed 16.Be2 was played. For 10 minutes, it showed 16.Be2, which clearly loses a piece for nothing. Then a correction was made so that the moves were 16.Ra1 Bd5 17.Be2. Big difference.
No more off-topic polluting. Go away. Something must be wrong with the people who keep doing it.
Another example: Hess - Christiansen shows 23.Qd2 and then 1 - 0. Clocks are stopped. It's been that way for 15 or 20 minutes. Huh? Isn't black doing ok here? Maybe Larry's cell phone rang?
Anyone know what happened? Christiansen is not the resigning type when he has the advantage.
The official site just posted this announcement:
"NOTE: The PNG Boards that transmit the U.S. Championship games instantaneously to a digital format have malfunctioned today. While all games are back online in real time, the Joel Benjamin vs. Samuel Shankland match PGN is showing an extra rook which is not in the real game. We are working diligently to resolve that error."
Yeah, sure. There are still several other uncorrected mistakes. Almost every game. Becerra - Robson is another example. Supposedly "1 - 0" after 24 moves. Can't be right.
Yah, the scores are a train-wreck. First day with new setup gets only a slap on the wrist, but yeesh. I'll never understand why so few sites do trial runs. It's not as if they didn't have the venue before today, like you have in a glass cube or something.
"The PNG Boards that transmit the U.S. Championship games instantaneously to a digital format have malfunctioned today. Games will be back online for round two tomorrow. Check back tonight for the PGN files."
Ok, try again tomorrow.
¨No more off-topic polluting. Go away. Something must be wrong with the people who keep doing it.¨
I personally prefer off-topic polluting rather than on-topic redundance .
I like Thomas idea of a separated arena ,1 Off topic thread would be nice.
Pardon for interrupting,
and yeah! official site no good!boo !boo!
Nice games though.
Hmm, the relay doesn't seem to work very well. I think Grozny or Oman would do a better job! Thomas, what do you think?
;-)
live coverage of a chess tournament on the internet must be the most difficult thing to accomplish in the world!
Is Nakamura's win against Shaba insane or what? Wow.
How about that guy beating Gulko. I know Gulko is no longer really Gulko, but still . . . for Hughes, it's already the tournament of a lifetime, with that one win.
Add: After the usual first-round delay, a relay snafu put the wrong names on the boards for a while, but that seems to be fixed. Jennifer Shahade and Emil Sutovsky are on the mic live for ICC Chess.FM. Susan Polgar has posted a big gallery of pics here.
Add: Holy hell, what a mess. The scores were so bad that the official site shut down the live broadcast during the round. And hours after the round finished (it's midnight in NY) the official site still says to check back tonight for PGN. 12 games!! This isn't the frigging Olympiad, people! Don't they still keep scoresheets? It also says the "PNG boards malfunctioned." Eh? DGT? PGN? Sounds more like a PEBKAC problem to me. Apparently nobody was on hand during the round to slap up a free java viewer and manually update and upload a PGN file every few minutes. That's not brain surgery and I'm sure they have enough chess people floating around to relay at least the top few boards.
All the tech experts and bandwidth in the world don't help much if you don't know anything about chess and chess on the web, I guess. I'd like to be charitable, and in fact this is me being charitable, but this is unacceptable. If you don't know how to use the tech, make sure you do a few trial runs, or a few dozen. And have a backup plan. I mean, not that this is an important or prestigious event or anything. The DGT software can be a real pain, I know from experience (and why I let Dutch studs handle it and send me the URLs). But this isn't the Friday Action Quad! We're supposed to be talking about all the great players and the great games, and we can't even see them. The few scores circulating are garbage. About the only one I've seen that looks real is Hess's win over Christiansen. Brilliant stuff from LarryC only to miss a nice counter-shot and go down in flames. PNG PGN after the jump.
Let's really hope we can chalk this up to bad luck and that everything goes smoothly tomorrow, or at least that it survives. The organizers from St. Louis that I had the pleasure to meet in Nashville last month had enough goodwill for a dozen tournaments, so they deserve a mulligan. I'm sure they are trying hard. But if this happens again the webosphere is going to go from annoyance to laughter, and that ain't pretty. (Just ask Braingames.) Maybe it's something going around the intertubes, since the Azerbaijan vs the World site is five kinds of crappy. The H1Nternet Virus?
PGN for round one now up here:
http://saintlouischessclub.org/US-Championship-2009-Round-1
Still some errors though. Ibragimov-Kamsky has a bunch of DGT auto-correct move order garbage. Ugh.
According to Shahade, you just replace 25.Bb4 with 25.Bb1 and it's correct. A little surprising Kamsky didn't take on f1 since White has nothing after Qe4 Re7 from what I can tell. Anyway, as long as the correct scores eventually make it out.
Time for some global cross-topic stuff - must be acceptable as Mig did a bit of the same ,:) :
"I think Grozny or Oman would do a better job!"
Dunno, Baku certainly does not ... . And (just kidding, no offense to another country) why did the St. Louis organizers get their PNG boards all the way from Papua New Guinea?
@Mig: "why I let Dutch studs handle it [the DGT software] and send me the URLs"
Now Thomas (living in the Netherlands) is getting really curious: Why are Dutch studs worldwide experts on this?
The US championship is so non spectator friendly that my friend and I drove all the way from chicago for this are leaving in great disappoints. They take away your camera at the door... you can't get close enough to the boards to see the games (they don't even have demo boards up!!!). And since their transmission sucks you can't even go sit in the commentator room cause the commentators have to keep running upstairs to make sure they are staring at the right score sheet!!!
These people seem like they invested no common in how to make this a spectator friendly event....
According to those on-site, only cell phones are taken away. And they stop allowing photos about 40 minutes into the round.
The commentators were dependent on the live internet broadcast, which didn't work. I assume the commentary room will be good if and when they can get the moves! Seems to be working today after some problems at the start.