Another exciting day at Cuernavaca. Four of the five games were decisive. Vallejo Pons nicely defeated Karjakin with the Black pieces to continue to lead the tournament. Hikaru completely outplayed Felgaer in a game where he employed another Nakamura wild creation, an opening which he achieved very little out of the opening. Ponomariov outplayed Bruzon in a more conventional opening to continue to share the lead. Volotikin showed Leon that his endgame skill needs a lot of work as he won an endgame with just a small edge. Cheparinov tried very hard to win an even Rook and Pawn endgame against Dominguez, a game which most GMs would have agreed to a draw hours earlier without the MTel rule.
After 6 rounds, the standings are:
1-2. 4.5 GM Ruslan Ponomariov (22, Ukraine, 2723), GM Francisco Vallejo Pons (23, Spain, 2650)
3. 4.0 GM Hikaru Nakamura (18, USA, 2644)
4. 3.5 GM Lenier Dominguez (22, Cuba, 2638)
5-6. 3.0 GM Ivan Cheparinov (19, Bulgaria, 2625), GM Andrei Volokitin (19, Ukraine, 2665)
7. 2.5 GM Sergey Karjakin (16, Ukraine, 2660)
8. 2.0 GM Lazaro Bruzon (23, Cuba, 2650)
9-10. 1.5 GM Ruben Felgaer (24, Argentina, 2607), IM Manuel Leon Hoyos (16, Mexico, 2428)
I think it is a pity that a country as large and wealthy as the United States does not host an event of this magnitude. What a thrill it would be to be able to see in person this kind of young chess talent.
I agree with you. That is really too bad. The problem is the USCF is not interested in finding sponsorship for such event.
the USCF never does anything. It can not even hold its own US Championships. it was going to drop the entire thing when AF4C came along with Yassar Seriwan and said they would do the job. and they are doing an excellent job. they keep getting better each year. and I am sure they will be better in the future as they iron out problems.
I watched Naka last night on ICC and it was an exciting game. there were about 450 players watching and kibitzing on the game and it was a lot of fun. I watched over at ICC. there is more kibitzing at ICC but for unknown to me reasons there is not as much kibitzing at playchess.com. but they have the games there also.
I dont have membership at playchess so I can not comment there. but playchess does have video and yasser doing comments on some games and it sounds good to me.
You can always get the games at playchess.com even if you are not a member.