U.S. Championships, Up to Round 8 (Updated)

Caruana, Carissa, and Christopher.

The U.S. Championships are well underway, to put it mildly, with eight of 11 rounds in the books. In the open championship, top-seeded Fabiano Caruana leads with 5 out of 7, half a point ahead of Awonder Liang, who has 4.5/7, and Hans Niemann, who has 4.5/8.

If you haven’t been following the event, but read the scores carefully, you’ll have noticed something odd and might wonder what exactly is going on. The answer is that the original cast of 12 players has been whittled down by one, as Christopher Yoo was ejected from the tournament after his loss to Caruana in round 5, and his results expunged from the tournament table. The games against him that were completed were recorded as byes, and his future games counted as bye rounds for those opponents. (Niemann will have the bye in round 9, so he’ll be even in games with Caruana and Liang afterwards.)

What happened was that Yoo was briefly winning or nearly so in his game with Caruana, but was steadily outplayed - a disappointing but hardly shocking result for someone playing an opponent 200 points stronger. When the game ended and it was time for the players to sign the scoresheets, Yoo ripped off the top copy and semi-crumpled his copy. That’s a little unprofessional, perhaps, but not such a big deal. Most of us probably haven’t done that - at least not before going back to our hotel rooms - but it’s likely that all of us have felt that sort of disappointment and anger after giving away a winning position against a quality opponent.

What happened next is another matter entirely. While arbiter Chris Bird spoke with Yoo after the crumpling, looking as if he was trying to calm him down and maybe empathizing a bit, Yoo eventually got up, and as he was leaving he apparently punched a female videographer in the back. The attack was unprovoked, as was acknowledged in a statement from Yoo’s own parents, and the police were called. Yoo faces charges for a 4th degree felony, was kicked out of the tournament, banned from the club, at least temporarily suspended by US Chess, and will probably face other chess-related repercussions in addition to whatever legal issues will be involved. As he’s a minor (he turns 18 in December) the legal ramifications are probably going to be far less than they would have been if he were a legal adult, but I don’t really know enough to offer more specifics.

It’s a horrible situation, first and foremost for the videographer. I hope she’s alright, and while I hope for Yoo’s eventual restoration to the chess world he shouldn’t be allowed to do the “I’m sorry and going to therapy, so please let me play again in a couple of months” gambit. He assaulted a woman, punching her in the back, and she had done nothing wrong at all and nothing to provoke him. (As if that would have justified it.) If it had been some rando who did this rather than a talented junior, we wouldn’t be dripping with sympathy for the assailant. Imagine what you’d want to do to Yoo if it had been your mother, wife, sister, or daughter that he had punched. Don’t do that, but do think about it (UPDATE to avoid a misinterpretation: I mean to think about how you’d feel; I don’t mean to consider acting on those feelings) if you’re inclined to say “oh, he’s just a kid who was upset; we all get upset sometimes”. Yeah, maybe, but we don’t punch innocent women (or innocent anyone else) in the back when that happens. And if you think Niemann’s chess career should have been ruined for cheating in some online games when he was a minor and for being an abrasive character but think that Yoo’s a nice guy and should get off with a slap on the wrist, I’d recommend thinking again. To be clear, I will say once again that I hope that Yoo is in due course fully restored to polite society, including the chess world. His life should not be ruined. But a slap on the wrist from USCF and FIDE would not be an appropriate penalty.

Now let’s turn to the tournament - or rather, tournaments: there’s also the concurrent U.S. Women’s Championship, which is making news for a good reason: IM Carissa Yip, the top seed, is leading. That’s not so surprising, and someone has to be leading, after all. What’s newsworthy is that she’s leading with an 8-0 score. She hasn’t quite clinched clear first, though any results that maintain her 2.5 point lead after the next round will take care of that. The real drama is seeing if she can bring her score to 11-0, which would win her the Fischer Prize of an extra $64,000, offered to anyone in either tournament who can match Bobby Fischer’s 11-0 whitewash of the field in the 1963/4 U.S. Championship. It would be great if she could do it, for herself, but also for U.S. chess in general and women’s chess in particular, which would receive a nice boost in media attention. (Even Garry Kasparov has been tweeting (X'ing?) about her.) It has also done wonders so far in getting her to fly up the women’s rating list, as she has gone from 40th in the world up to 26th, having gained almost 28 points.

As for the open (men’s) event, Caruana is leading, as mentioned above, and if his win over Yoo hadn’t been vacated he’d have 6/8 on the strength of a four-game winning streak from rounds 3-6. (Wesley So was the other “unlucky winner”, whose round 2 defeat of Yoo was also vacated. Yoo drew his other three games, against Abhimanyu Mishra in round 1, Grigoriy Oparin in round 3, and Sam Sevian in round 4.)

Here are the pairings for round 9, with scores and the number of games played in parentheses:

Robson (4/8) - So (3.5/7)

Mishra (1.5/7) - Aronian (4/8)

Oparin (2.5/7) - Shankland (3.5/7)

Sevian (4/7) - Dominguez (3/7)

Caruana (5/7) - Liang (4.5/7)

Niemann (4.5/8) - BYE

Finally, here are all the games from the open section, with annotations to almost half the games.