Today's recap of the first days of the 2023 National K-12 Grade Championships has a lot of content to catch you up. And there's no rest, either, as round three has already concluded and the fourth round is already underway in Orlando. In this recap…
After a full-on bloodbath in round five, the players cooled down a bit in the Open section of the 2023 U.S. Championships. With six drawn games, GM Fabiano Caruana remains in the lead with Niemann following closely at his heels, but this doesn’t mean the games were boring.
At the end of a period in most sports, athletes are eager to score going into the intermission: maybe even a buzzer-beater. The 2023 U.S. and U.S. Women’s Championships were no different, as the last round before the first rest day showcased immense energy on almost every board. Players were going all-in in their opposite-side-castling pawn races, patiently squeezing in objectively drawn endgames, and even king-walking to the center of the board with queens present!
Seven Americans and a retired Croatian consistently put their pieces on the wrong squares at the start of each round. Nine times, they tried to get it right, and nine times, they ended up having to play from unusual starting positions with complicated castling rules instead.