Sam Sevian won the 2023 Champions Showdown after a brilliant final day, where he defeated both Garry Kasparov and Fabiano Caruana to finish with 7/9 points and take home the $37,500 first place prize. Sam Shankland, Wesley So and Levon Aronian shared second place with 6/9 points each. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
Levon Aronian and Sam Sevian managed to overtake the lead after an exciting day 2 in the 2023 Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX, going into Sunday’s final rounds with 4½/6. A full point behind the leaders are Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, and Sam Shankland, each with 3½/6, while former World Champion Garry Kasparov stumbled after leading day 1, scoring only ½/3 to end the day on 3/6. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
Former World Champion Garry Kasparov stormed in to grab the lead on the first day of the 2023 Champions Showdown: Chess9LX, as he scored two wins, against Wesley So and Ray Robson, along with a draw against Hikaru Nakamura to end the day in clear first place with 2½/3. Tied for second going into day 2 are Levon Aronian and Sam Sevian, both half a point behind with 2/3. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
“One tournament, three schedules” is finally ready to become, simply, “one tournament.” After six days at Grand Rapids, the “traditional” schedule is ready to welcome the accelerated six-day and hyper-accelerated four-day players to their one-game-a-day way of life. In anticipation of the final three rounds, today’s annotations come from award-winning Chess Life columnist WGM Tatev Abrahamyan.
Day four of the U.S. Open saw the end of the invitational tournaments, the first master-on-master match-ups of the traditional open schedule, and the first round of the six-day Open as well. Let's get caught up!