The US Junior Championship is a prestigious tournament with a long history. Among the past winners are former World Champion Bobby Fischer, Arthur Bisguier, Yasser Sairawan, and Hikaru Nakamura. Since 1966 the US Juniors are played as an invitational, separating it from the US Junior Open tournament.
This was my first time playing the US Junior, and I was looking forward to competing in this event. The chief attraction of the invitational Junior Championship is that the winner qualifies for the following year’s US Championship, in which they get to play top world-class players in a typical round-robin format, just like other elite tournaments. With next year’s edition potentially having a lineup that could include Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So and Gata Kamsky, each participant in the Junior championship had sufficient motivation to go all out.
The players arrived in St. Louis on July 6, one day before the event was to begin, and we all drew our pairing lots during the opening ceremony that evening. The picking of the lots was done by last name, but in reverse alphabetical order. By the time I got around to picking, all the five White lots had already been selected, and I had to content myself with the four Whites draw. The strongest US Junior ever had begun.
In Round 1, I had the black pieces and faced a good friend of mine, the precocious International Master Luke Harmon Vellotti. This was a tough game to start off the tournament. Although one may have been tempted to play a solid opening, especially with the black pieces, I decided to go for a more fighting and complex game by revisiting an old friend.
Chatting with Luke after Round One
It felt great to start the tournament off with a victory as Black against a strong opponent. I carried the momentum through the next three rounds and raced out to 3.5/4.
In Round five I faced FM Ruifeng Li (above), as Black. The game started off horribly, as I got trapped in my opponent’s preparation, like an insect in tree sap. Ruifeng was incredibly well prepared and was blitzing out his moves. He literally got a near-decisive advantage with his preparation. Meanwhile, I was sweating it out and had already fallen way behind on the clock. Under enormous pressure, I ended up making a horrible blunder, which I realized as soon as I had moved. I saw the winning continuation for Ruifeng, and thought I was going to lose any moment. The only consolation was that Ruifeng was out of his preparation.
Ruifeng Li playing tournament leader Akshat Chandra in Round five
It was here that the tide of the game started to turn. Ruifeng missed the killer blow, and I started to gain on him, despite being an exchange down. His advantage dissipated after inaccurate moves from his side, and I found myself holding the initiative now. However, I was so relieved of not being in any danger of losing that I decided to simplify matters and force a draw. Here is the game, annotated by tournament analyst GM Mackenzie Molner.
After a bloodless draw in Round six against IM Michael Bodek (above), I faced GM Jeffery Xiong, with the black pieces. This was easily the most anticipated match of the tournament, with the two top seeds facing off in the crucial seventh round. I had a ½ point lead over Jeffery at this stage, and so it was essential to hold my ground and not lose my grip on the tournament standings.
Jeffery Xiong playing Akshat Chandra in Round seven
I decided to roll with the Taimanov once again. Things were fairly balanced, and we soon traded queens into a minor piece endgame with rooks on the board. The position was completely even, but I had fallen into serious time trouble. I had about two minutes to complete the last 12 moves and as a result, I made some serious mistakes. When we reached the time control, Jeffery had a near-decisive advantage. I defended tenaciously for the next few moves, while Jeffery kept playing accurately to hold his advantage. But suddenly, Jeffery made a blunder, overlooking a fantastic resource of mine. This allowed me to simplify into an easily drawn 2 vs 1 rook endgame, and the game was eventually drawn. The following game notes by tournament analyst GM Mackenzie Molner.
– Part two of this report will follow shortly –
Akshat Chandra wins 2015 US Junior Championship
7/19/2015 – The Championship is open to the best US juniors younger than 21 years. Previously it has been won by the likes of Fischer, Bisguier, Seirawan and Nakamura. This time the title went to 15-year-old Akshat Chandra, who scored 7.0/9 and a performance of 2688. Akshat is well known to our readers – he writes reports for us. Which led Garry Kasparov to refer to him as 'the journalist'.
LinksYou can use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com. |
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