Fourteen Still Perfect at US Masters: Day Two Recap!
Rounds two and three of the strongest open chess tournament in the United States, the US Masters, took place yesterday on Thanksgiving day. This tournament, hosted by the Charlotte Chess Center, is a nine round open event hosting 264 total players, each vying for a share of the $28,000 prize fund. The US Masters is broadcasted live on Twitch, with GM Kayden Troff providing commentary for the morning rounds and GM Daniel Naroditsky covering the evening rounds.
Through three games, only fourteen players have a perfect score. Those players include the event's top seed, super-GM Fabiano Caruana, who won as black in round three against GM Mark Paragua to remain on board one heading into our third day of play:
Although there are 47 Grandmasters in the tournament's large field, two of the players on 3/3 are IMs: Isik Can (who now faces Fabiano Caruana on board one in round four!) and Evan Park.
Park, the lowest rated player in the top score group, pulled off two upset wins against GMs on Thursday, including this victory with the white pieces over GM Brandon Jacobson.
Three other 2600+ rated GMs, Grigory Oparin, Alexander Donchenko, and Nikolas Theodoru, still have perfect scores. GM Awonder Liang, the second highest-rated player entering the event, has also been perfect in his games played, but took a half-point bye in the early round yesterday.
Another player on 3/3 is GM Ilya Nyzhnyk, with a rating of 2576, who defeated IMs Pijus Stremavicius and Nico Chasin to keep his perfect score. Here's his round two game, in which he used a flexible setup as white against his opponent's Stonewall structure, and gradually created lots of positional pressure which he converted into a win:
The remaining players tied atop the standings are GMs Viktor Matviishen, Elshan Moradiabadi, Guhu Mitrabha, Aditya Samant, Brian Escalante, Razvan Preotu, and John Burke, the latter of whom delivered a crushing opposite-side castling attack with the black pieces yesterday:
In addition to the Grandmasters vying for first place, many other well-known players are participating in this event, including GM-elect Brewington Hardaway, US women's champion Carissa Yip, and streamers FM James Canty and WGM Dina Belenkaya. Follow along with the US Masters games right here on chess.com, and full standings are viewable here. Credit again to Kelly Centrelli for all photographs in this post!
Thanks so much for reading, and we'll update you again tomorrow with the latest news and results from the US Masters.
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NM Dennis Norman
Chess Coach - Club Journalist
