U.S. Championship, Round 9

Keeping the status quo after a day of draws.

Not much changed in the relative standings at the U.S. Championship, though it nearly did. Both the leader, Fabiano Caruana, and the player in clear second, Ray Robson, had very good winning chances against Awonder Liang and Alex Lenderman, respectively. Both the ALs escaped though, and only one player managed to win a game: Sam Shankland, against Christopher Yoo. (An honorable mention goes to Leinier Dominguez, who did his damnedest to lose against Sam Sevian. Playing an easily, obviously drawn opposite-colored bishop ending for a very long time and playing it verrrrry slowly, he twice came within a second of losing on time. It would have served him right, but fortunately, for the sake of his sanity - but probably unfortunately for the sake of curing him of terrible time management skills - he avoided that catastrophe.)

(Today’s games are here, without analysis.)

Anyway, Shankland’s win brought him into a 327-way tie for third (a slight exaggeration), a point behind Robson and a further half a point behind Caruana. Four rounds remain; here are the pairings for tomorrow’s (Saturday’s) round 10:

• Aronian (3.5) - So (4)

• Moradiabadi (2) - Niemann (3.5)

• Lenderman (4) - Swiercz (5)

• Sevian (5) - Robson (6)

• Liang (5) - Dominguez (5)

• Yoo (3.5) - Caruana (6.5)

• Xiong (5) - Shankland (5)