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- Under 1500
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- Under 800/Unrated

North American Open 2007

December 26-29, 2007
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Organized by the Continental Chess Association

Over 600 players are participating in the North American Open at Bally's Hotel/Casino in Las Vegas.  Final standings for all sections are now posted as well as a pgn file of 60 games played in the Open Section.
 

Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura

International Master David Pruess

Latest News:

Rnd 7: 10:45 pm

IM David Pruess knocked off GM Varuzhan Akobian, his third GM in a row to take joint first with GM Hikaru Nakamura with 6/7.  Congratulations to the both of them.

Rnd 7: 9:55 pm

FM Alex Kretchetov upset the ratings to beat GM Ildar Ibragimov on board 3.  Kretchetov finishes with 5½/7 in at least 3rd place, maybe 2nd depending on the result between Akobian and Pruess.

Rnd 7: 9:30 pm

Hikaru Nakamura does it again!  Nakamura assured himself of at least a share of first place by knocking off unbeaten GM Alex Shabalov in the final round.  He can still be caught by whoever wins the Akobian-Pruess game on board 2.

Here is the moment when Shabalov resigned against Nakamura.

Rnd 7: 8:50 pm

We are just past the first time control and all the action is still going on from boards 1 to 3.  Nakamura is the exchange up against Shabalov, Pruess seems to be on the way to beating another GM in Akobian while Kretchetov seems to be on his way to an upset against Ibragimov.  Of course anything can change between now and the end of the night.

Results that are in... Becerra beat Kleiman on board 4 while my Boston Blitz friend Shmelov upset a GM in Mitkov on board 5.  Kraai had one that he was proud of in beating Adamson on board 6 while Garcia beat Beelby on board 7.

Rnd 7: 5:45 pm

Round 7 has been going about an hour and the fans got the pairing they wanted!  GM Shabalov has a half-point lead over a group of 3 players and he is playing GM Nakamura on board 1.  IM Pruess, who has just beaten two GMs in a row, now gets to try it again as he faces GM Akobian on board 2.  Click on the MonRoi Games Viewer link to watch all the action!

Standings are now up to date as at the end of round 6 (and shows round 7 opponent).

Rnd 6: 2:30 pm

Well, I couldn't get on my computer to update the latest news as Irina Krush has been hogging it all day long!  Oh, and Yury Shulman and Walter Brown... in fact anyone but me!  (Apparently I'm the only person with Internet, plus I was really too busy doing other things but I just wanted an excuse for not updating for a while!)

GM Nakamura was the first player to finish on the top boards, beating GM Sharavdorj when it looked like, at least to my very untrained eye, Sharavdorj may well have had the upper hand in the game at one stage.  Apparently Nakamura had calculated much deeper than everyone else and after a few tactics he collected the full point.

Up on board 1, GM Shabalov lost his 100% record but still stayed half-point in the lead by drawing with GM Akobian, while on board 3 IM Pruess once again upset the odds to beat GM Garcia.  Garcia sacrificed a pawn early on but it certainly looked like he had absolutely no compensation for it.  However, Pruess didn't play the ensuing position accurately enough and he soon found himself in difficulty, at least until Garcia walked straight into a blunder on the last move of the time control.

On the other boards towards the top, GM Becerra beat FM Andrews on board 5 and FM Kretchetov beat IM Sevillano on board 6.  The board 4 encounter between GM Ibragimov and GM Rohde is still going.

Rnd 6: 10:35 am

Round 6 has just started.  We got the obvious match-up on board 1 between GMs Shabalov and Akobian.  On board 2 we have GMs Nakamura and Sharavdorj while on board 3 GM Garcia will play IM Pruess who knocked off GM Shulman last night.  Will Akobian be able to bring Shabalov back into the mix, or will Shabalov guarantee himself at least a share of first with one round to go with a win?  Stay tuned!

The top 9 boards are being played live on MonRoi.

Rnd 5: 1:15 am

The round has finished.  GM Shabalov heads the field with his 100% record of 5/5 while GM Akobian is just half-point behind on 4½.  The two are expected to meet in round 6 which starts at 10:00 am (PST).  All standings after round 5 are now updated.  Just two more rounds to go!

Grandmaster Alex Shabalov on 5 points

Grandmaster Varuzhan Akobian on 4½ points

Rnd 5: 10:15 pm

Board 1 finished abruptly when GM Ibragimov flagged on move 40.  They were using an Excalibur clock when GM Shabalov, playing white, made his 40th move and the clock added 1 hour to each side (the clock apparently was set incorrectly, it has a little "white" label that should be in the correct place when starting the game).  Anyway, upon seeing that Ibragimov froze up and wondered what had happened.  It only took a couple of seconds for his clock to then show 59 minutes remaining and Shaba claimed the win on time, which was upheld.  The final position was unclear although Shaba was a pawn to the good by the looks of things.  However, quite a sad way for such an exciting game to finish.  Shabalov will go to bed tonight with his 100% record intact!

Rnd 5: 10:05 pm

Board 4 saw a slight upset with IM David Pruess getting the better of GM Yury Shulman.  David moves into the 4 point score group which by the end of the night should have a few other players in it.  The board 1 battle, quite a tactical slugfest by the looks of it, between Shabalov and Ibragimov still rages on!

Rnd 5: 8:55 pm

Andrews was no match for Nakamura down on board 3.  Nakamura's combination started with 24...Nxd4 followed by giving his queen for two rooks.  He made having the two rooks look much stronger than a queen, steamrolled a pawn through the middle of the board and forced Andrews into heavy material losses.  The large audience that usually stays to watch the Nakamura games will get to bed extra early tonight!

Rnd 5: 8:50 pm

Akobian was the first to draw blood on board 2 by beating Mitkov in just 20 moves.  He moves to 4½ and has come storming back after his round 2 game which saw his opponent offer a queen in time trouble, which Akobian took, and then just a few moves later he took 30 minutes trying to work out how the heck he fell into that trap that allowed a perpetual check.  Nice way to bounce back Var!

Rnd 5: 8:30 pm

Grandmaster Alex Shabalov is the only 100% in the Open with a record of 4/4.  There is a group of four players just a half-point behind him on 3½; Grandmasters Ildar Ibragimov, Varuzhan Akobian and Nikola Mitkov and FIDE Master Todd Andrews who scored his 3½ by playing a much weaker field of players in the 2-day schedule.

In the pairings for round 5, Shabalov meets Ibragimov on board 1 while Akobian and Mitkov have an all-GM match-up on board 2.  Andrews gets Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura on board 3 who is rated about 400 points higher than anyone else he has faced so far.  Welcome to the tournament Todd!

Live games (top 8 boards) are currently available for viewing on MonRoi games viewer.

Rnd 4: 5:00 pm

Grandmaster Alex Shabalov is the only unbeaten player coming out of the 4-day and 3-day schedules after beating Grandmaster Yury Shulman in round 4.  The only other unbeaten player, Grandmaster Julio Becerra was beaten on board 2 by Grandmaster Varuzhan Akobian.

The 2-day schedule merges in with the main group this evening for round 5 tonight, which should give us a clearer picture of what is going on in the tournament.