2007 World Open: First half sizzles!
The first half of the World Open sees a tight race for the $30,000 prize fund. Hikaru Nakamura, Leonid Yudasin and Varuzhan Akobian top the charts with 4½ followed by a sextet of players on 4-1 (Vadim Milov, Evgeny Najer, Daniel Fridman, Alexander Stripunsky, Julio Becerra, Darmen Sadvakasov).
Nakamura, who won the National Open, appears focused and driven and showed a combination of power and speed in his games. Milov, who won the Chicago Open, drew with Fridman and Becerra to fall off the pace. With 34 Grandmasters competing in the Open section, the competition is tough and will come to a head when the schedule merges on today.
While there have been no breakthrough performances by up-and-coming players, the main story of the first half may be the performance of IM Calvin Blocker (2472). He lost his first four games to players with ratings of 2200, 2258, 2019 and 1872(!). That has to be a statistical anomaly if there ever was one.
Coverage: (The Chess Drum)
Daaim -A tally of the leaderboards shows 1193 entries in the tournament, but that includes reentries. So the field is approximately 1150 players in all the sections.
Dr. Daaim Shabazz,
Thanks for the excellent coverage of the 2007 World Open. I have searched the net and in my opinion your intimate coverage is the best!
Daaim,
I hope you had an awesome time at the tournament this year! I couldn’t make it b/c I am teaching a research methods class this summer and getting ready to defend my masters thesis, but I followed as best I could and saw that you had a positive result. Do take note that Teddy Coleman was one of the players who defeated Blocker, and he performed well throughout the tournament to land an IM norm. (You missed his results when you mentioned that there had been no breakout performances to date, but such is acceptable when the author is in the heat of battle himself.) Be cool, man, and keep the beat going!
Hotep
Hotep Maliq,
Good hearing from you… been too long. I wish you well in your academic pursuits. How about that Greg Oden? 🙂
The World Open was great and the energy was there. The Open section was “off the hook” with all types of exciting games and scenarios. I had a decent result, but after getting 4½-1½, I faltered with two losses and closed with a draw. I played some decent chess and most importantly, my losses were instructive. All the sections were tough despite a number of sections being won with 8-1.
About Coleman… I think I wrote that brief after the 4th round when IM Calvin Blocker was 0-4. Coleman ended up scoring a great nine-round result as did Vishnuvardh Arjun. I’m looking forward to young players like Kayin Barclay and Jimmy Canty to break through with IM norms soon.