The Stars Come Out for the World Open Print E-mail
By Jennifer Shahade   
July 1, 2009
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GM Gata Kamsky on board 1 sporting Saint Louis Chess Club gear, Photo Chris Bird
If you thought the 7-day section of the World Open in Philadelphia was strong with GMs Najer, Bareev and Kacheishvili, check out the five-day, which includes: GMs Gata Kamsky, Varuzhan Akobian, Yury Shulman and foreign GM Ilya Smirin of Israel. With Hikaru Nakamura and some other surprises surely in store for us in the 4 and 3-day schedules, it will be quite a fight for the $20,000 guaranteed first prize in the Open.

See the full list of 5-day players and standings here. Many top juniors are also participating, including GM-elect Robert Hess, Daniel Naroditsky, Ray Robson, Alex Lenderman and Sam Shankland.

In round three of the 7-day, Robson scored a victory over GM Vinay Bhat:

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In the five-day there were a number of tough struggles as early as round 1. (The Under 2400 takes away many of the master level players who GMs would normally get paired down to in the early rounds.) Naroditsky and Hess fought it out till 53 moves to reach an imbalanced endgame where Daniel won Robert's knight for a few pawns:

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Check live updates on the official World Open website, and be sure to bookmark the live games link, powered by Monroi. At the World Open, much of the action and the fights for big money prizes take place in the rating sections. See an index for all standings on www.worldopen.com.

Photos

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GMs Joel Benjamin and Alexander Shabalov


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GM Gata Kamsky in round 1


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GM Yury Shulman

 
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