Press Release by John Henderson

Round 1 10th January 2003

Top seed Gregory Kaidanov

The opening round of the US Chess Championships is always a busy day for its overworked and underpaid press officer. To be fair most of my problems aren't caused by the arrival of the chess press in the press room – by in far they are so used to being around big chess events, know the players therefore don’t need to be taken by hand everywhere to have everything explained to them.

However this isn't the case with the general media who suddenly hit us on the opening day. It's always a problem dealing with them - but a pleasant one as they often appreciate the time spent explaining all the background of certain players, the tournament structure and the nuances of the chess scene. This invariably leads to positive PR for chess and the Championships where it is badly needed.

One 'star' media performer we've had this year is New Yorker Maurice Ashley, who qualified as the first African-American Grandmaster in 1999. Now he’s become the first African-American player to play in the Championships. "I feel like I've already won, just coming in the door," said Ashley. "If I'm the first, what that means is that there's going to be a second, and a third, and a fourth. That I'm very pleased about." In fact, there already is a second: Stephen Muhammad, of Columbus, Ga., who qualified after Ashley.

Their participation marks another landmark in a tournament that, for 155 years, drew white men pretty much exclusively. Last year, America's Foundation for Chess radically changed the tournament's format, opening it to dozens more players by way of qualifying events - including, for the first time, women. The field has also expanded to fifty-eight comprising twenty seeds that include the 2001 and 2002 US Junior champions, thirty six qualifiers and two wild cards nominated by the A4FC; 14-year-old New Yorker Laura Ross who has already scored international level results and the winner of the 2002 Samford Fellowship, 18-year-old Varuzhan Akobian.

This year's winner will take home $25,000 (Bobby Fischer only took home $2,500 after winning his record-breaking eighth title in 1966) from a total prize fund of $255,000; an increase of $50,000 from last year making the tournament probably the biggest, annual prize for chess anywhere in the world.

Larry Christiansen of Cambridge, Mass., who won last year's event in an exciting sudden-death playoff over Nick De Firmian, looked determined to hold on to his title when he strolled into the playing hall for the first time. Believe me, despite Larry's indifferent results over the last year, he's not the sort of player who will relinquish his crown without a fight – and a messy one at that! Also brimming with confidence after her big breakthrough last year is 22-year-old Jennifer Shahade of Brooklyn. However she faces strong competition for the women’s prize of $12,500 this year with the inclusion of Irina Krush.

So who'll win the title this year? Well, apart from the obvious favorite of top seed Gregory Kaidanov who has had very good results in the past year or two, notably returning home to his native Moscow to win the super-strong Aeroflot Open, I have a funny feeling there could well be a major surprise this year with someone like Hikaru Nakamura or Varuzhan Akobian making a big breakthrough.

http://www.af4c.org

Round 1

Shiber, Julia 1-0 Shahade, Gregory, Kraai, Jesse 1-0 Groberman, Elina, Levina, Anna V 0-1 Mulyar, Michael A, Perelshteyn, Eugene 1-0 Ross, Laura R, Foygel, Igor 1-0 Tsai, Cindy, Epstein, Esther 0-1 Gurevich, Dmitry, Browne, Walter S 1-0 Hahn, Anna, Battsetseg, Tsagaan 0-1 Lapshun, Yury, Fishbein, Alexander 1-0 Esserman, Marc, Bennett, Allan 1/2 Kreiman, Boris, Zaichik, Gennadi 1-0 Markzon, Gregory, Pruess, David 1/2 Fedorowicz, John P, Sarkar, Justin 1/2 Kudrin, Sergey, Serper, Grigory 1/2 Watson, John L, Muhammad, Stephen A 1/2 Ivanov, Alexander, Akobian, Varuzhan 1-0 Krush, Irina, Baginskaite, Camilla 0-1 Finegold, Benjamin, Yermolinsky, Alex 1-0 Donaldson-A., Elena, Stripunsky, Alexander 1/2 Lein, Anatoly, Burnett, Ronald 0-1 De Firmian, Nick E, Shabalov, Alexander 1-0 Ippolito, Dean, Kriventsov, Stanislav G 1/2 Benjamin, Joel, Sagalchik, Olga 0-1 Ashley, Maurice, Seirawan, Yasser 1/2 Donaldson, John W, Pixton, Aaron 0-1 Gulko, Boris F, Goldin, Alexander 1-0 Paschall, William M, Enhbat, Tegshsuren 0-1 Kaidanov, Gregory S, Nakamura, Hikaru 1/2 Shahade, Jennifer and Kaufman, Larry C 0-1 Christiansen, Larry M