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The 2023 American Cup continued in St. Louis on Monday with championship bracket semifinals that were won by GMs Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So respectively. Nakamura was in fine form with the black pieces and outplayed GM Leinier Dominguez in the middlegame to take his match 1.5-0.5, while So required rapid playoffs to overcome U.S. Champion GM Fabiano Caruana.

In the women's event, GM Irina Krush was held to a draw for the first time in the event but won her match by a 1.5-0.5 margin. FM Alice Lee with the black pieces also dispatched IM Nazi Paikidze in a convincing display by the rising star.

Action from the championship and elimination brackets will continue at The American Cup on Tuesday, March 21, 2023, at 11 a.m. PT/20:00 CET.

"I will try to press and see what happens" were the words that Dominguez left viewers with after a tame game-one draw against Nakamura on Monday, and 10 moves into game two it was clear he was indeed playing for the win.

Although Dominguez managed to build an edge and gain the bishop pair, time pressure was a problem for the Cuban-born GM, who had less than seven minutes left by move 26. Against one of the world's best fast chess players, this proved to be fatal, and Dominguez's position quickly collapsed.

Our Game of the Day that saw Nakamura progress through to the championship bracket final has been analyzed by GM Rafael Leitao below.

A slicing rook sacrifice was the nail in the coffin for Dominguez's position and made it easy for Nakamura to come up with a caption for his YouTube recap, "Dear YouTube, I Sacrificed THE ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK," playing on GothamChess' viral moment.

After drawing their second classical game in a 52-move, Nimzo-Indian Defense where they averaged 98.8-percent accuracy, So and Caruana needed playoffs to determine who would be Nakamura's championship bracket final opponent.

Playing with the white pieces, So opted for the Ruy Lopez, and Caruana set up solidly with the Morphy Defense, Columbus Variation. On move 12, the reigning U.S. champion played the slightly inaccurate 12.Rab8? and gifted So a continuation that would isolate his a-pawn.

With a permanent structural disadvantage, Caruana desperately tried to hold his position together, but So gradually improved his advantage, eventually inciting his opponent who had dropped below 10 seconds to blunder.

The win proved decisive for the world number-eight as he was able to hold in the next game after quickly trading into an opposite-colored bishop and rook ending. Although the game was played until the 125th move, the result was never in doubt, and Caruana was relegated to the elimination bracket.

Following a win against WGM Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova on Monday, Krush hinted that she would look to keep up the aggression in their second game. True to her word, the eight-time U.S. women's champion was the first to strike with a queenside intermezzo, fearlessly giving up an exchange for a pawn and the initiative.

With healthy connected passed pawns on the queenside, Krush began to tighten the screws with a liquidation combination that removed any serious chance of her opponent's swindling. Despite garnering a strong edge, Krush opted to secure the match result with threefold repetition and booked her spot in the championship final. (If Krush had won, she would still have to face off against the winner of the elimination bracket.)

FM Alice Lee's rise to stardom continued on Monday with a black-pieces victory over IM Nazi Paikidze that pushed her FIDE rating to 2386, gaining her the number-two spot on the U.S. women's FIDE rating list.

In the Slav Defense: Modern, Quiet, Schallopp Variation, Lee took space in the center early and launched a queenside assault after Paikidze castled long on move 12. Not one to shy away from complexity, Paikidze fought back by infiltrating Lee's kingside, but the lack of space in the center was her downfall, and her 13-year-old opponent crashed through decisively.

Lee will now face Krush in the championship bracket final. Interestingly, should she defeat her opponent in their first classical encounter, she would pass the 2400-rating mark for the first time in her career.

With two IM norms under her belt, Lee has a good chance of smashing the record for the youngest female IM and WGM in U.S. history, which is currently held by WGM Carissa Yip (16 years, one month, and 18 days old).

All Games

The American Cup is an over-the-board event in the U.S. capital of chess, St. Louis, featuring the country's top grandmasters. Split into Open and Women's categories, the players will compete in a double-elimination knockout bracket while competing for their share of the $300,000 prize fund.

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Nakamura With Black Defeats Dominguez, So Overcomes Caruana - Chess.com

LAS VEGAS On the first day of February, the new chess set appeared atop the circular glass table in the Mo Ostin Center lobby. Nobody with the UCLA mens basketball team knew it was coming. But here it was, delivered by the founder of Poison Pawn Chess, a local company. A crisp black-and-white board with objectively cool redesigned pieces, begging for tactics and gambits.

As Jaime Jaquez Jr. sat down for a conversation, his eyes went wide. Like a spaceship landed a foot in front of him. The hoops talk, clearly, had to wait.

T.J.! the Bruins star called to T.J. Wolf, the programs director of player personnel, who happened to be passing by. They just put this in?

Yes, Wolf replied. And the Poison Pawn guy was in the locker room.

Hell, yeah, Jaquez declared. I want to try to play him.

Hes like a master, Wolf said.

I know, Jaquez replied. Thats why I want to play him.

A couple of months later, UCLA has a spot at the West Regional, and everything is still in development. The Bruins are a chess team, obsessed with competing on the boards in more ways than one.

When the locker room doors swung open Wednesday for NCAA Tournament media availability, there was injured guard Jaylen Clark, tucking away his phone just as an online match with Jaquez ended. A few feet away, fifth-year senior Russell Stong put the finishing touches on a win over Tyger Campbell, just as the Bruins point guard left for press conference duty.

Elsewhere, PlayStations and Xboxes dominate the idle minutes in the lives of college basketball players. Not so at UCLA. The Pac-12 champions prefer to play mind games. We like to think that were mature, Stong said Wednesday, and it was unclear how serious he was being. We like to keep our mind ready. And honestly you can apply chess to life and basketball a lot of the time. Its really just keeping your mind sharp and thinking outside of the box. The answer is always on the board. Its just a matter of finding that answer in the right moment.

Who made the first move here, and when, is unclear.

Campbell might have been on the vanguard, but even he wasnt sure how much credit he could take as he walked down a T-Mobile Arena hallway. I guess Id say I had a hand in the start of that, he said. He took a trip home before his freshman year and his friends brother was playing a lot of chess. Campbell got into it. He brought a physical board and chess set back to Los Angeles and brought the game to the group.

Chronologically, it would line up with Stongs recollection, which places the inception date in the 2018-19 season when he and Campbell were freshmen. They played chess back then occasionally, giving it up in favor of Super Smash Bros. Then one day, we were like, Remember when we used to play chess?' Stong said. And then we started playing again.

It quickly became an obsession of choice. More people on the team play than dont, at this point, Campbell said. Every player has his own board, with two larger community boards available at the Ostin Center. The ubiquity of chess apps allows the Bruins to leave their physical sets at home, as they have this week in Las Vegas, but sate the appetite for competition nevertheless.

And, as no two chess games are alike, everyone comes to it for their own reasons. Its all you, Jaquez said. I play a sport where other guys can make mistakes, whereas you play chess and every move you make is your own. You are the only one that can make a mistake. And the other part I like about it the answer is always right in front of you. You just have to find it. You put this here, you put that right there, theres a right and wrong answer here, of what to do. You just have to find it out. I think thats really cool.

Its a way to engage differently, Clark said. We talk about different stuff on this team. We talk about stocks, money movement, business. This aint your average team. Were like an Ivy League school, the stuff we get into.

In the Bruins estimation, chess and basketball are linked pieces. It sounds like a specious claim until they start to reason it out.

Pressure situations. Finding ways out of traps, as Stong put it. Examining what an opponent is trying to do and sussing out the countermeasure.

You assume that opponent will do one thing, Jaquez said, and then they do another thing. And then you have to figure everything out all over again.

One mistake, Campbell said, and thats the end. You have to stay alert. You have to see the whole game.

In chess, sometimes it looks like youre sacrificing things when youre really not, Clark said. Youre looking four, five, six steps down the line. If you call a play and it doesnt work, but youre just trying to see if the big man was going to drop or roll or whatever, and then you come back and run the same play with a different counter, youre playing ahead. We do that sometimes here just to get a feel of a team. Were not even necessarily looking at that as a scoring option. Its just to see different things and attack from there.

By most accounts, Campbell and Stong are the resident masters, relatively speaking, but apparently anyone can be a hot hand. Which sounds familiar. Its a day-to-day thing, Stong said. Its like basketball somebodys playing well, theyre going to win.

Gonzaga awaited, but there were a lot of hours between UCLA getting to town and eventually getting to the Zags at T-Mobile Arena. A lot of ways to bide that time. There wasnt a question about the way the Bruins would choose. It was there on their screens to see.

A different college basketball pastime. A different way, as Jaquez put it, to look at the world. You think youre in a bad position, and all of a sudden you see something great, Jaquez said. I think its beautiful.

(Photo of, left to right, Dylan Andrews, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Tyger Campbell: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)

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How UCLAs favorite hobby became chess - The Athletic

Zaniac's afterschool 'chess club' teaches kids moves of the game, gets them off screens

MARCH 23, 2023 - NEVER STOP LEARNING: Students who take part in Zaniac's afterschool chess club in Biltmore Park are learning the moves of the game while engaging their brains without screen. They also get help with homework while they're there. (Photo credit: WLOS staff)

At Zaniac in Biltmore Park, there's an afterschool program where you could say the kids have "all the right moves."

Moves and counter-moves, that is.

The children taking part in the program participated in a few games of chess.

Although instructors at Zaniac usually teach students about coding or the many other things one can do on a computer, this particular activity teaches them about chess and what they can learn from playing the game.

IMMACULATA CATHOLIC SCHOOL CELEBRATES $3.6 MILLION RENOVATION

"It's good for the kids to get off of the computers for a while and engage and use their brains for puzzles or chess," said Oliver Porter, instructor. "You have to make decisions under pressure; you have to make sure you make the right move."

"What I like about chess is it's like a competition because you have to see who wins and what it's like," said Sydney, who likes to play chess. "You have to really think about it."

The Zaniac students meet five days a week after school.

They also get help with their homework in addition to using the computers and doing experiments.

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Zaniac's afterschool 'chess club' teaches kids moves of the game, gets them off screens - WLOS

You can now play chess against some of the strongest women players in history! Head over to our Play Computer page to challenge GMs Judit Polgar, Hou Yifan, Anna Muzychuk, and Irina Krush.

These new bots will be in the Top Players section of the Play Computer page and will be a permanent fixture on Chess.com. However, there's no time like Women's History Month to celebrate these legendary players!

Below you can learn more about each new bot.

Playing strength: 2502.

Irina Krush is the strongest woman in the United States and an eight-time U.S. women's national champion. Can you survive against this fierce opponent?

Playing strength: 2606.

Anna Muzychuk is a Ukrainian grandmaster and a former Women's World Blitz and Rapid Champion. Are you fast enough to defeat this legend of the 64 squares?

Playing strength: 2686.

Hou Yifan is the second highest-rated woman in history, a four-time Women's World Champion, and a full-time college professor. Do you have what it takes to defeat her?

Playing strength: 2735

Judit Polgar was once the youngest grandmaster in history and eventually reached a super grandmaster peak rating of 2735, making her the highest-rated woman in history.

Don't forget to go to our Play Computer page and play against the Women's History Month bots, Hikaru, and more! And click here to download the new bot avatars in full resolution.

Originally posted here:
Play Against The Best Women Chess Players In History - Chess.com

Mistakes are an integral part of the game of chess: everyone makes them, even supercomputers! Yet, you should be able to avoid certain kinds of blunders easily. For instance, when you start in chess and learn about Scholar's Mate, then there is no excuse if you still get checkmated this way. You can blunder your queen in the very beginning or get checkmated on move 12, but you still shouldn't get checkmated in four moves by the Scholar's Mate!

To put this concept a different way, if you are asked what's 27 times 72 and make a mistake, it is understandable. However, if you are asked to multiply 4 by 7 and make a mistake there, it is inexcusable since you are supposed to know a multiplication table by heart.

Just like a multiplication table, there are some chess concepts any player should know by heart. For instance, when as a little kid, I signed up for a chess club in our local Pioneer Palace, they needed to determine what group I would belong to. So, they gave me just one position.

I didn't know anything about this kind of endgame and naturally didn't find the only winning move 1.Ke3, so I was promptly sent to a beginner's group. Indeed, only a beginner wouldn't know this kind of endgame by heart. By the way, if you are not sure how to play this endgame, you can practice it here.

After I joined our chess club, I learned that in this basic king and pawn endgame, it is all about the opposition, and if the defender wins the opposition they should be able to make a draw. Nevertheless, when I played a friendly game against my clubmate, it unexpectedly failed me!

I ran to our coach, yelling that my friend had just "refuted" opposition. The coach smiled and explained that if the king reaches the sixth rank for White or the third rank for Black and he is ahead of a pawn, then the opposition becomes irrelevant, and the pawn will promote. I remembered this lesson for my whole life. Many years later, I saw something similar in The Batsford Chess Encyclopedia by Nathan Divinsky. Here is a position from the book.

The book says: "if it is Black's move, then White has the opposition, and if Black moves his king then White will advance his king and be able to queen his d-pawn. However, Black can play 1...h3, and now he has the opposition. Black can then keep the opposition and draw the game."

If the author of the book played my friend who "refuted" the opposition, he would know that Black is completely lost regardless of whose move it is. As a matter of fact, both pawns on the h-file are irrelevant since White wins even if we remove them! Of course, mistakes like this are inexcusable since it is truly the ABCs of chess and you should know it by heart.

A similar example of an inexcusable mistake happened recently in a very high-level game. You know that I follow games played by Uzbek players. Therefore, I couldn't miss the following encounter, which was extremely important for the final outcome of the FIDE World Team Chess Championship.

At first glance, the game looks rather boring: the players quickly traded most of their pieces and entered a drawish endgame. Nevertheless, there was a very important moment that could change the outcome of the game instantly. It happened in the king and pawn endgame, can you spot it? If it is a difficult task for you, let me give you a hint. There is a well-known pattern, familiar to most experienced players. It happened in many games, so let me show you just three of them played by grandmasters.

Now I hope this pattern becomes as clear for you as a multiplication table, and you should be able to easily find an answer to the question about the first game.

It is amazing that two strong grandmasters misplayed a simple endgame so badly. You can argue that when they entered the pawn endgame, both players had less than 10 minutes on their clock. To me, it is not a good excuse. Would you be able to answer 4x7 in five seconds? There you are! It is all about knowledge! I think it is an enormous psychological pressure (the fate of the World Team Championship was being decided!) that made both players forget their 'chess multiplication table.' But I hope that you, my dear readers, will never make this mistake in your games!

See more here:
Never Make These Mistakes! - Chess.com