At the midway point… five-way tie for 1st!

Hikaru Nakamura showed why he may have surpassed Alexander Shabalov as the most exciting player on the U.S. circuit today. His game with Sergey Kudrin showed his fighting spirit and will to win until the last bit of energy is squeezed from the position. Out of a Grunfeld, the two players entered a speculative line and almost immediately, the game was a firestorm after Nakamura's 8.cxd5!? He then offered an exchange, but Kudrin did not want the task of defending his dark squares and a pending attack with h4-h5.

The game held a delicate balance when Nakamura sacrificed a pawn to gain more time putting his pieces in attack mode. After 15.d6 Qa3 16.Bxf7+! The point being that on 16…Kxf7 (16…Rxf7 17.Rxc8+) 17.Ng5+ Kg8 (17…Kf6 18.Qd4+ e5 19.Qxe5#; 17…Ke8 18.Rxc8+) 18.Rxc8! with threat of smothered mate with 19.Qd5+ Kh8 20.Nf7+ Kg8 21.Nh6+ Kh8 22.Qg8+ Rxg8 23.Nf7#. However, after 18.Rxc8 black can play 18…Qb3.

According to the main site, the story was that Nakamura had analyzed 17.Bg5, but missed the prophylactic 17…Nc6! (see annotated game).Nakamura's pieces were swarming the board, but  Kudrin  was able to stave off the attack by giving back material and brought his queen back to defend the fort. It looked to be drawn, but the precocious 16-year old took one more shot with 29.e5? Bxe5 30.Qh6. Kudrin missed a couple of a counter-shots in 29…Rd8! and 31.Rf4!  but a draw was soon agreed.

Nakamura dived in with 16.Bxf7+ leading to a powerful attack.

Alexander Fishbein kept pace with a nice win over Igor Novikov. Playing the anti-Sicilian Rossolimo, developed an aggressive position and snapped off a pawn with 21.Bxh6! which led to a favorable complications. When the smoke cleared, Fishbein had two minor pieces for a rook… like Josh Friedel learned against Alexander Onischuk and Dmitry Schneider learned against Gregory Serper, the rook is no match.

There were several exciting draws in Benjamin-Shulman (French Tarrasch) and Akobian-Gurevich (Benko Gambit) and some excellent wins Milman-Finegold (1-0 in a Rauzer Sicilian) and Muhammad-Kleiman (1-0 in a Slav).

Coming off of tough draw, Stephen Muhammad battled his opponent in an interesting middlegame, but gained the advantage when Kleiman overlooked the strength of white's passed b-pawn. That pawn was later used to disguise a star move from the diagrammed position.

While black was burdened with the task of watching the dangerous passed pawn, Muhammad opened operations on the other wing and uncorked the sharp 36.e4! (diagram). After 36… Bxe4, the lowly pawn revealed the plan with 37.e6! Now black has to allow another passed pawn because on 37…fxe6 white mates with 38.Rxg7+  Kh6 and 39.g5+. Kleiman resigned in a few more moves.