It’s hard to imagine there’s a home-field advantage in a game played on a board of 64 light and dark squares.
Nevertheless, it was Chicago GM Yury Shulman who was alone at the top at the end of the 107th U.S. Open, which wound up Sunday in the Windy City suburb of Oakbrook. The Belarus-born Shulman, who was runner-up in January’s closed U.S. Championship, scored an impressive 8-1, a half-point ahead of a knot of 10 pursuers that included GMs John Fedorowicz, Gregory Kaidanov, Dmitry Gurevich and Joel Benjamin.
Over 850 players competed in the Open, traditionally one of the country’s largest — although not one of the more lucrative — Swiss events.
There were a couple of strong local performances to note, as well. Virginia master Alex Barnett suffered his only loss of the tournament in the final round to Gurevich, boosting his rating with a 6 1/2 – 2 1/2 score. And Virginia’s Abby Marshall went 5 1/2 – 1/2 to win her second straight Susan Polgar Invitational, a competition for female state high school champions from around the country held in conjunction with the main tournament.
The rest can be read here. 
Yay, Abby! 🙂