Way back in 1972, a little ol’ boy from Chicago, Illinois, Bobby Fischer, took on the Soviet Chess apparatus and won. It started the American chess boom and completely changed the way that the entire game was looked at by people across a country that had, until now, not cared a damn about chess. Chess, people claimed, was going to be a great American sport now.
A few decades passed, and Rex Sinquefield decided to make chess a big deal in the U.S. again, after significant waning interest in the decades since Fischer’s initial chess boom. The lack of another American Champion, weird FIDE things and the absolute domination of the soviets with Karpov, Tal, and Kasparov made the game less popular in the eyes of the average American. Sinquefield spent millions on building the Saint Louis Chess Club, which has rapidly become one of the biggest chess clubs in the U.S. and a hugely prominent club for players across the country.
It’s also the host of the American cup this week, featuring the top eight U.S. players. It’s a range of time controls, as most major chess tournaments are, and it has featured essentially a host of who’s who in American chess royalty.
This year, there are a great many interesting faces. Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Wesley So and Levon Aronian are all former World No. 2s, holding some of the highest ever lifetime Elo ratings in history. All four have broken the 2800 boundary at least once, cementing themselves as icons of American chess, even if they’ve all slipped a bit since their peaks. Sam Sevian, Ray Robson, and Leinier Dominguez are similarly incredible players, though none of whom have broken the 2800 point during their careers. Leinier has remained slightly outside the top 15 due to inactivity, but he’s the fifth best American player and a fun player to watch. The dark horse is Abhimanu Mishra, a sixteen year-old who became a grandmaster at age 12 and has proceeded to get big in American chess. He’s never broken 2700, but he’s also only sixteen. (God I feel old). And while he’s U.S. No. 14, he’s still worth watching.
Of course, with such a star-studded cast, the entire field drew on March 15. Robson, a puzzle genius, went down early against Caruana, only to manage to find a drawing combination later in the game after getting thoroughly confused by Fabi’s Nc3. Preparation can only take you so far, and Robson managed to pull out the draw thanks to a combination of prep, talent, and intuition. A 94-move draw between Nakamura and Mishra was plagued by misses in a complicated rook-and-pawn endgame that is notoriously hard to analyze. Both players blundered, and the game ended in perpetual check. This gave both a chance to stabilize and try again for the win tomorrow: however, Nakamura will be playing with the black pieces next, which could be a disadvantage.
Aronian played some of what is, in my opinion, the most exciting chess. I always get hype when GMs play some kinda novelty, and the knight sacrifice on the eighth move of the game gave me something to sit up in my seat for. The move almost threw Sevian off, but he managed to stabilize with a number of sacrifices. The 40-move game ended in threefold check in a rook and pawn endgame as well.
Finally, So vs. Dominguez was interesting. I was told it was boring, but I could actually follow most of the moves to start out with (thanks to a good number of them being well-analyzed), so I had a lot of fun trying to figure it out. By move 30, I had completely lost track of the position, but the analysis was sharp enough to at least pretend I knew what was happening. The game also ended in a draw, even though I think white was up a pawn (and managed to promote).
The last classical section for this stage will happen tomorrow with flipped colors for all the pieces, which I’m really excited to watch. There’s quite a bit here to look forward to, and I’m personally rooting for So to somehow make it to the mountaintop given his two second-place finishes.
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