Wins in rounds 3 and 4 allowed Fabiano Caruana to go into the first rest day as the sole leader at the U.S. Championship in Saint Louis. Three players are sharing second place with 2½/4 points: Sam Shankland, Hans Niemann and Abhimnayu Mishra. In the women’s championship, Carissa Yip and Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova are sharing the lead with 3/4 points each. | Photo: Crystal Fuller
Three rounds of the 2023 U.S. and U.S. Women's Championships are in the books, but we have already seen a lot of incredible games! Saturday's third round brought a number of positional sacrifices, neat tactical tricks, missed opportunities, and devastating blunders. Let's take a look at the most notable moments.
Another round is in the books at the 2023 U.S. Championships and we’ve been treated to some cutting tactical blows and positional masterpieces. In the Open Section, we had an all-too-familiar reminder that nobody is safe. Coming off a convincing win with the black pieces against GM Ray Robson, GM Sam Sevian looked to increase his lead with the white pieces against GM Hans Niemann.
Sam Sevian and Nazi Paikidze are the sole leaders in the open and women’s sections of the U.S. Championships, respectively. Sevian beat Ray Robson with black, while Paikidze got the better of Ashritha Eswaran with white in the first round of the national championships. | Photo: Lennart Ootes