Six-way tie for first in Las Vegas

GMs Kamsky, Fressinet, Petrosian, Kolev, Friedel and IM Finegold tied for first place at the 2008 National Open which was held this weekend in Las Vegas.

The National Open is one of America’s longest running open tournaments. First established by Ed Edmondson in the 1960’s, Fred Gruenberg and Al Losoff have been responsible for the National Open for over two decades now.

It’s the biggest event within the Las Vegas Chess Festival that included a 20-board simul by Kamsky, blitz and scholastic tournaments, free lectures by titled players and the “Susan Polgar World Open Chess Championship for Girls and Boys”.

The National Open is a 6-round Swiss and players can choose between the standard 3-day or alternate 2-day playing schedules (half-point byes are available for all rounds). The 2008 National Open offered a $100,000 prize fund.

America’s number one Gata Kamsky had an excellent start with four wins out of four games, but then drew his last to games against Petrosian and Friedel, allowing five players to share the first spot.

Here are two games from the tournament. I didn’t get them from the official site nor from TWIC, but by copypasting them from Chess Life Online. The games were provided by Monroi and that’s very annoying because je have to register to replay the games, even after the tournament. I can understand that a tournament decides to let Monroi provide the live coverage, since their applets are indeed quite handy and you don’t have to hire a certified DGT board technician, but afterwards the games are public domain and so why not just put a little PGN file on the tournament website?

First we see a lucky Kamsky, who had a lost position against Mark Paragua from the Phillippines. According to Jennifer Shahade, after the game Paragua said that he should have played 24…Qxa4 instead of Rxa4, but 25…Rd2! still looks winning as well. Below there’s a nice attacking game by Petrosian.

National Open 2008 Final Standings (top 35) No. Ttl Name St Rat Pts 1 GM Kamsky, Gata NY 2782 5.0 2 GM Fressinet, Laurent FRA 2706 5.0 3 GM Petrosian, Tigran ARM 2666 5.0 4 GM Kolev, Atanas BGR 2620 5.0 5 IM Finegold, Ben MI 2594 5.0 6 IM Friedel, Josh NH 2504 5.0 7 GM Erenburg, Sergey ISR 2613 4.5 8 GM Khachiyan, Melikset CA 2566 4.5 9 IM Robson, Ray FL 2433 4.5 10 GM Nakamura, Hikaru NY 2747 4.0 11 GM Gurevich, Dmitry IL 2594 4.0 12 GM Paragua, Mark C PHI 2588 4.0 13 GM Yermolinsky, Alex SD 2584 4.0 14 IM Altounian, Levon AZ 2531 4.0 15 IM Bradford, Joseph TX 2477 4.0 16 IM Pruess, David CA 2471 4.0 17 GM Laylo, Darwin PHI 2452 4.0 18 IM Vucic, Mladen NY 2415 4.0 19 FM Rensch, Daniel AZ 2373 4.0 20 FM Adamson, Robby AZ 2368 4.0 21 IM Tate, Emory IN 2367 4.0 22   Schuyler, James NV 2357 4.0 23 FM Yanayt, Eugene CA 2280 4.0 24 GM Akobian, Varuzhan CA 2666 3.5 25 FM Kretchetov, Alexandre RUS 2400 3.5 26 FM Bournival, Braden NH 2393 3.5 27   Bryant, John CA 2361 3.5 28   Hansen, Eric CAN 2347 3.5 29   Shankland, Sam CA 2344 3.5 30 FM Brigljevic,Milan CRO 2343 3.5 31 FM Monokroussos, Dennis IN 2342 3.5 32 FM Naroditsky, Daniel CA 2320 3.5 33 FM Raptis, Nick John OR 2305 3.5 34 IM Formanek, Edward PA 2270 3.5 35   Small, Gregg CA 2264 3.5