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Yury Chooses White Wine and the White Pieces for Round One Print E-mail
By Jennifer Shahade   
May 7, 2009
The 2009 U.S. Championship first round pairings were announced today at the opening ceremony, held at the Saint Louis Museum of Art. American Idol contestant Aloha Mischeaux sang the national anthem, while the lieutenant governor Peter Kinder and mayor Francis Slay spoke and also proclaimed May as the month of chess in Saint Louis. Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis founder & president Rex Sinquefield introduced the venue and the players.

To choose the colors for the first round, defending champion GM Yury Shulman chose between two opaque glasses, one filled with white wine and one with red. He poured his choice into a clear glass, and it was a white wine, so Yury, along with all other evenly seeded players gets white in the first round. Undoubtedly, one of the games to watch will be #2 seed Hikaru Nakamura facing off against 4-time U.S. Champion Alexander Shabalov.

Photos from the opening ceremony coming soon. Also check out the pairings for the first round, enter or make last minute changes to your fantasy team and be sure to watch the games live tomorrow on uschesschamps.com or the Internet Chess Club.  Look for updates and a first round recap video on uschess.org. 

Round 1, Friday, May 7, 2:00 pm

Bd  White                                  Black
 1. GM Ibragimov, Ildar (0.0) 2628    -    GM Kamsky, Gata (0.0) 2798
 2. GM Nakamura, Hikaru (0.0) 2757    -    GM Shabalov, Alexander (0.0) 2620
 3. GM Friedel, Joshua (0.0) 2568     -    GM Onischuk, Alexander (0.0) 2736
 4. GM Shulman, Yury (0.0) 2697       -    IM Sevillano, Enrico (0.0) 2549
 5. IM Hess, Robert (0.0) 2545        -    GM Christiansen, Larry (0.0) 2681
 6. GM Becerra, Julio (0.0) 2672      -    IM Robson, Ray (0.0) 2542
 7. IM Zatonskih, Anna (0.0) 2503     -    GM Akobian, Varuzhan (0.0) 2664
 8. GM Kaidanov, Gregory (0.0) 2662   -    IM Krush, Irina (0.0) 2496
 9. IM Shankland, Samuel (0.0) 2464   -    GM Benjamin, Joel (0.0) 2650
10. GM Ehlvest, Jaan (0.0) 2649       -    IM Brooks, Michael (0.0) 2419
11. Lawton, Charles (0.0) 2350        -    GM Khachiyan, Melikset (0.0) 2632
12. GM Gulko, Boris (0.0) 2631        -       Hughes, Tyler (0.0) 2293
 
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