Midnight Letters - Catching Up with the US Chess Championship

chess.com

Greetings to all Midnight owls! It's around midnight in our country (UTC+08:00). I wanted to catch up with the US Chess Championship where our countryman, Wesley So, is competing and leading the tournament. Round four was streamed 16 hours ago. I wasn't able to watch it so I'm catching up now. I'm not watching all the games. I'll just see the ones that catch my interest including Wesley's game of course. The field is mixed with young talents Andy Woodward, Awonder Liang and Abhimanyu Mishra. The old guards are the likes of Sam Shankland, Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, Hans Nieman and Wesley So.

Wesley's opponent is the young Mishra who's playing solidly and hasn't lost in seventy games. The game started with a Catalan Opening with Mishra having the White pieces. Wesley came well prepared and sprang a novelty Nb4 with the idea of blocking the Catalan Bishop on g2 with Nd5.

After the position above, the game was no longer featured and ended in a draw. The commentators focused on the Sam Shankland vs Hans Niemann game. Hans sacrificed a rook on h4 and had a lasting attack against Sam's king. White is up by a piece but it's not easy to defend the position.

In the next position, if King captures the Bishop on e3 then Qg5 is checkmate. Of course, Sam saw it and moved Kd1. His position is still difficult even if he was up by a piece.

Sam still had a chance to draw the game but he made a mistake by moving Kc2 instead of the drawish Kd2. It's not easy to see the difference from my side but this small change was all it took for Black to get a winning position and convert it to victory.

I'm disappointed that they didn't feature Wesley's game more but he's still leading the tournament with three points, half a point ahead of his closest pursuers.