The Cairns Cup in St. Louis just passed the halfway point, and it’s not so surprising that after five of nine rounds the top seed and winner of the Norway Chess Women’s event, Tan Zhongyi, is the leader. It’s still a small lead, though; she has 3.5 points, half a point more than Harika Dronavalli and Mariya Muzychuk, and literally half the field is only a further half a point behind. Several games caught my attention and seemed instructive and entertaining in various ways, so I’ve annotated them here.
In the Stepan Avagyan Memorial in Jermuk, Armenia, top seed Arjun Erigaisi has run away with the tournament, clinching clear first with a round to go. His score of 6/8 has him a point and a half ahead of his closest pursuers, Sam Sevian, Amin Tabatabei, and Bogdan Deac - terrific players all. But Erigaisi is on another level these days, and his live rating has soared to 2779.9, all alone in 4th and getting into eyeshot of the two Americans ahead of him. Getting there is one thing, staying there another (ask Alireza Firouzja). Still, he’s young and even if he does falter a bit, he’ll be back (again, ask Alireza Firouzja, who recently won a rapid event over Magnus Carlsen and a bullet championship over Hikaru Nakamura).
Speaking of Nakamura and the bullet championship: Hikaru Nakamura apparently got upset at Aman Hambleton’s commentary (either the commentary or just the fact that Hambleton was doing it). Here’s Hambleton’s side of the story. (Those of you who know more are invited to write in with details.) I didn’t listen to every moment of the commentary, but I watched a lot of it, and would never have had a clue that Hambleton had any axe to grind or ever sensed that he was anything but fair to Nakamura. But that’s the extent of my ability to speak to the situation.
Something different, and I recognize that there’s something amusingly self-referential about it. If you have subscribed to this blog and never receive the notification emails this won’t help you, because you probably won’t receive this one either. (So who am I addressing? Those of you who are reading this but wonder if I see the logical problem.) If, however, the problem is an intermittent one, or you’re reading it on the web, or if you know someone who has had trouble receiving my emails, this Substack post on the subject might help.