By Hikaru Nakamura on 6/23/2009 11:18 PM

Hello once again to everyone out there. As a courtesy to one of my fellow friends, I have decided to blog about the comical events of another crazy summer day in New York. Early this afternoon, I chose to go into the city as several friends who were playing in the Marshall Invitational were interested in some singles/doubles. I must admit that anytime I go to the Marshall these days, it feels like I am in a foreign country. I guess this is what happens you show up at your old stomping ground years later. Shortly after this, a few of us went out for lunch and ate some burgers, while a certain unnamed player decided to show a great game from the morning round of the Marshall Invitational (Diagram below). IM Esserman-Sorkin, Marshall Invitational (7) 22.6.2009

During our analysis with unnamed player we discussed how during the game there was a repitition involving Qd2, Nc6 Qh6 Nb4. Here though, the unnamed player...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 6/22/2009 4:31 PM

Good afternoon to everyone on another completely overcast and miserable day here in New York. It has been some time since I last blogged and this has been due to a variety of reasons. I have also started my preparation for both the World Open and San Sebastian beginning this week, so that is occupying a lot of my time at the present moment. Before I get into all the chess topics which I am sure everyone is anxious to read about, I'd like to start by talking about sports. First, I was highly impressed with the Pittsburgh Penguins when they came back at 3 different points in the series to beat the Detroit Red Wings. Normally, come June, I have little interest in the playoffs as the teams I root for tend to be long gone. However, along with much of the hockey world, I was glad to see the Wings lose, and for Sid The Kid to get his first ring despite the fact that the true star on the Penguins was Malkin. Overall, kudos to the Pens on a title well deserved. Sadly, despite a great start to the NBA Playoffs involving...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 6/2/2009 4:34 PM

Well, I'm not sure where to begin with this blog. Coming off of the high from the US Championship, I headed to France 10 days later to continue my streak of solid play. Prior to the event, I just wanted to play some good chess and get my rating back over 2700 if possible. I assumed that a score of 3/4 would be good enough, but as fate would have it, I ended up completely outperforming this expectation. Onto the games...In the first round, I was paired against GM Christian Bauer with White. Last year when I was playing for Antibes, I played Bauer with White in a very interesting and complicated English. This time around, I decided to play 1.e4 and we entered a complicated variation of the Scandinavian. The game was roughly equal until about move 23-24 when Bauer made several inaccurate moves as he neared time pressure. I grabbed a pawn and thought I was clearly better; however, the position actually remained relatively balanced as Bauer's knight was better than my bishop. Fortunately, he didn't find the most accurate...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 5/31/2009 10:19 AM

Hello again everyone! I will recap my French adventures later, but for now just a quick update. In the third and final leg of the French League, I went 4/4 beating GMs Bauer,Krasenkow,Fontaine and Hamdouchi. This great result finally pushed me past 2700 again to 2710. Stay tuned for more blogging once I am back in the US tomorrow.

By Hikaru Nakamura on 5/23/2009 12:14 PM

Jaan Ehlvest (2606) - Hikaru Nakamura (2701) US Championship, Saint Louis 9.5.2009

1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 b6 4.Bg2 Bb7 5.0-0 Be7 6.b3 0-0 7.Bb2 d5 8.e3 c5 9.Nc3 Nc6!? (Diagram 1)



This pretty much the starting position for the whole variation. However, despite being roughly equal, 9...Nbd7 was slightly easier to play.

10.cxd5 Nxd5 11.Nxd5 Qxd5 12.d4 Rad8 13.Ne5 (Diagram 2)



The past few moves have all been standard theory. However, here I slightly lose my head and played 13...Qxg2?! (13...Qd6 was slightly more sound. After 14.Qe2 Nxe5 15.Bxb7 Bf6 White is slightly better, but the position isn't particularly anything special. Another try is 14.Nd7 Qf5 15.e4 Qg5 16.h4 Qh6 17.Bc1 g5 with an unbalanced position. (Diagram 3)



...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 5/22/2009 7:40 PM

Hikaru Nakamura (2701) - Alexander Shabalov (2569), US Championship Saint Louis 8.5.2009

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be2 e6 (Diagram 1)



7.0-0 Be7 8.a4 0-0 9.f4 Qc7 10.Be3!? (The main line here is 10.Kh1, but I saw that Karpov had played this before, so there cannot be anything wrong it either!) 10...b6 11.Bf3 Bb7 12.f5!? (Other interesting tries are 12.g4,12.Qe1 and 12.Qe2. Each of these variations has its own flavour to it, but to put it simply it is a matter of taste. 12...e5 13.Nb3 Nbd7 14.g4!? (14.Qe2 was tried by Anand rather unsuccessfully in the game Anand--Wojtkiewicz, GMA Baleares Open 1989 and continued 14...Rfe8 15.Rfd1 Rac8 16.Nd2 Nc5 17.Bf2 d5! 18.exd5 e4 19.Bxe4 Bd6 20.Qf3 Bxh2 with a very complicated middlegame.) 14...h6 15.h4 d5!? (Diagram 2)



16.exd5 e4 17.Bg2 Qg3 18.Qe1N (Previously,...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 5/22/2009 8:12 AM

Good morning to everyone from nice sunny and hot White Plains, New York. I apologize to everyone that I was not able to blog yesterday, but I spent much of the afternoon and evening in New York City, and I completely crashed when I got home around 10 PM from exhaustion.

In this, the third and final installment of my experiences from the US Championship, I will recap the rest of the tournament from after I won round 9 to the closing ceremony. In the last blog, I left off after I won my game against GM Josh Friedel. Throughout this game, I had my eye on the Hess-Akobian game for obvious reasons. Unlike two of his other games in the tournament, I was pleased to see that Varuzhan found a way to avoid a losing position after 15 moves with Black for a change. I was especially optimistic about the game when I saw queens come off early as this would appear to very much play to his style. At the same time, it also meant that he'd avoid getting blown off the board like he did against Gata and me.

After my game finished, I went downstairs to the commentary room and gave a few comments relatively brief comments to Emil Sutovsky,Jennifer Shahade and Macauley Peterson. I do not know if the audio broadcast was archived or not, but it was hard for me to really be anything but slightly dazed due to the incredibly anti-climatic nature of the final game I played. In 2005 when I won, I had to grind a very complicated endgame against GM Ildar Ibragimov which went well into the fifth hour. This time around, with a short three hour game requiring very little effort it was hard to say much of anything. After I left the commentary room, I went outside and made a brief call to my parents before Kris&I went off to get some lunch at Culpepper's. About five or six minutes after we ordered food, I got several messages from people on my crackberry hearing that the game Hess-Akobian was drawn. In retrospect, I'm a little surprised I didn't start screaming at the top of my lungs considering how much this victory meant to me. After I gulfed down my food, I ran back to the club for the final interview which I believe is on the actual website of the Saint Louis Chess Club.

...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 5/20/2009 8:42 PM

Sorry for not posting sooner, but in keeping with every day of this week thus far, I've been quite busy and when I'm not taking care of work, I am trying to enjoy some well deserved sleep. In case anyone from New York took time out of their evenings to check out the news, apparently CBS was very busy covering the Heart Walk in NYC so the piece did not actually air. However, I have been told that it will definitely air on the weekend for those who are still interested. Without further ado I will now pick up where I left off yesterday.

Round 5: Clash of The Titans

In round five I was paired against the top seed Gata Kamsky with White. Gata and I have been in constant competition ever since his return to chess. However, surprisingly, we have only played once despite playing in numerous tournaments together. The one time we played before was way back in 2004 shortly after his return to chess. We played in the Tuesday Night Masters which was a very strong event run by Greg Shahade and my good friend John...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 5/19/2009 7:17 PM

As promised, I will attempt to finally write a blog characterizing my feelings and experiences from a truly remarkable event and probably the best I have played in many months. Although I would have liked to have blogged sooner, I was sleeping until close to noon today when I did an interview with the local New York area based WCBS area reporter Tony Aiello. The clip was supposed to have aired at 6 PM, but as it has not I assume it will be on the 11 PM news for those of you in the New York area.

I will attempt to recap this round by round and my feeling before/during/after. This should be particularly enlightening for the first few rounds as I did not comment either on Chess.FM or in the analysis room where GM Emil Sutovsky and WGM Jennifer Shahade both did a phenomenal job. However, before I get into the nitty gritty of the tournament itself it goes without saying that everyone associated with the Saint Louis Chess Club did a phenomenal job in the organization. I would like to take an opportunity to thank...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 5/18/2009 6:47 PM

Good evening to everyone out there. Unfortunately, this will not be the blog in which I chronicle my run during the championships. Having said that, I am still quite tired from a long 48 hours and just arrived back in New York, so everyone has to wait one more day before I write an actual blog. However, I would like to thank everyone for the well wishes from all forums.