The American Cup – Nakamura is the Champion
The Saint Louis Chess Club gave home to the American Cup from the 16th to the 26th of March. American Cup has an unusual format, an eight-player double-elimination bracket. It allows each competitor to be eliminated twice, and it has twice as many rounds as a single elimination. The defeated players can continue the tournament in the Elimination Bracket, which runs alongside the Championship Bracket, where the undefeated players are playing.
The time control was 90 minutes for the game plus a 30-second increment starting on move one for the Championship Bracket and for the Elimination Bracket 25 minutes for the game plus a 10-second increment starting on move one.
Only the best chess players in the USA could play for the $200,000 prize fund: GM Hikaru Nakamura (2768), GM Fabiano Caruana (2766), GM Wesley So (2761), GM Levon Aronian (2745), GM Leinier Dominguez (2743), GM Sam Shankland (2710), GM Ray Robson (2702) and GM Sam Sevian (2687).
Championship Bracket
The only decisive match during the classical games was in the first round, where Nakamura defeated Sevian with white, where he turned the positional advantage into a whole point. The remaining pairs made draws in the first three rounds. In the fourth round, Leinier Dominguez, Wesley So and Fabiano Caruana advanced to the Championship Bracket semifinals.
In the second round, Nakamura again won his match in the classical game, after winning the second game of the match with black. The first two games of the Caruana – So match ended in a draw, but the third game turned out to be the decisive one. So won after a long endgame, which was decisive, as Caruana can not come back in the fourth game.
The final of the Championship Bracket was very thrilling. The first two games ended in a draw. Nakamura won the third game, but So equalised the score in the fourth round. In the next two rounds, the luck stood on Nakamura’s side, who won both games. He won the Champions Bracket in an impressive style and secured his place in the finals of the American Cup.
Elimination Bracket
Aronian and Shankland took their chance in the first round of the Elimination Bracket, as they defeated Sevian and Robson. Their next opponent for fighting to survive were the eliminated players from the Championship Bracket semifinals, Caruana and Dominguez. The second-round matches were Caruana against Aronian and Dominguez against Shankland. Aronian won with the score of 4 – 3 and Dominguez won 1½ – ½ after getting a winning advantage in the middle game. The winners find themselves against each other in the next round. Their battle ended quickly when Dominguez blundered in the first game and didn’t win in the second.
In the final of the Elimination Bracket, So and Aronian had the chance to play to qualify for the finals. So won in the third round, after Aronian sacrificed too much material. The remaining games ended in a draw. With this result, So qualified for the finals of the tournament against Nakamura.
Final
Their first game ended in a very odd-looking stalemate:
The other two following rapid games ended with whole points for So, after Nakamura’s blunders. This meant that there will be a rematch on the following day.
In the rematch, Nakamura won, after Wesley So blundered, and let Nakamura capture his queen in the third game of the match. Nakamura became the 2023 American Cup Champion.
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