When I left off covering the U.S. Championship, there were two rounds to go. After drawing in the first two rounds Fabiano Caruana had gone on a tear, winning in rounds 3, 4, 6, and 7. Ray Robson had done almost as well, starting with five(!) draws before winning in rounds 6, 7, and 8. After their winning streaks, they cooled off, and hadn’t won any further games up through and including round 11, where we left off with two rounds to go.
As it turned out, nothing happened after that, either. In round 12 they both had Black - Caruana against Sam Shankland and Robson against Christopher Yoo, and neither of them came anywhere close to enjoying serious winning chances. That’s not to say that nothing happened, as four of the other five games did finish with a winner. Hans Niemann won his third game in a row, defeating Sam Sevian to reach a +1 score. Wesley So likewise made it to +1 by defeating Alex Lenderman, while Levon Aronian got back to 50% by defeating poor Elshan Moradiabadi, who lost his last four games in the tournament and scored just half a point from his last nine games. Awonder Liang reached +2 with his win against Dariusz Swiercz in a rook + a- and c-pawn vs. rook ending. If one starts that ending from a “normal” position it’s a theoretical draw, but there’s no guarantee that one will succeed in holding it - and Swiercz didn’t. Finally, the game between Jeffery Xiong and Leinier Dominguez was drawn.
That left the final round, and Robson needing to score half a point more than Caruana to reach a playoff. He had his chances against Xiong, but after a serious error on move 38 and further errors after the time control, he had to scramble to save the game, which he eventually did. As for Caruana, there was never any doubt about his game: he had White against Aronian, and played a line of the 5.Re1 Berlin (which is already extremely drawish) that is known to result in a dead drawn king and pawn ending. The game was over in 12 minutes, which was about four minutes longer than the Dominguez-Shankland “battle”: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be3 Ng4 7.Bc1 Nf6 8.Be3 Ng4 9.Bc1 Nf6 10.Be3 and 1/2-1/2. Dominguez finished half a point behind Robson, tied for third, so why did he do it? There’s a good answer: the top five finishers qualified for the World Cup. Whatever money Dominguez might have earned, had he won and tied for second, is outweighed by the money he’ll get playing in the World Cup - not to mention the chance that event gives him of qualifying for the Candidates. So it was a reasonable decision, unfortunate as it may be for the fans.
Awonder Liang also tied for third after drawing with Niemann, who tried hard to win the game but couldn’t quite manage. Niemann finished in a five-way tie for fifth, but (I think) it was So (who drew a long game with Sevian) who had the best tiebreak score and won the automatic qualification for the World Cup. Niemann was sixth, Xiong was seventh, Shankland eight and Sevian ninth.
Aronian finished another point back, in tenth, and the bottom four players were the only ones involved in decisive games on the final day. Yoo started the event well but struggled after round 3, but finished with a win over Swiercz to catch him. Finally, as already noted above Moradiabadi lost his last game - Lenderman was the recipient this time - and finished alone in last place with just two points out of 13. He did win one game, back in round 2, against Liang - and that may have been consequential. Had Liang managed to do what almost everyone else in the field did, and defeated Moradiabadi, then if everything else remained the same (a big, dubious “if”) he would have finished tied for first with Caruana.
Here are the games from the last two rounds (with light comments). Congrats to Caruana and the top five!