Wesley So Wins His Third U.S. Championship, In a Playoff

Only the initial rapid round-robin was needed to determine the winner of the 2021 U.S. Championship, and it's the same winner as last year (and 2017): Wesley So. He had some good fortune in his first game, as he was losing to Fabiano Caruana before turning the tables, but that's how it goes. Caruana had his chances yesterday, too, but couldn't quite finish the job either day. He did come back from his loss to So by beating Sam Sevian in the second playoff game, but in the third game of the round-robin So defeated Sevian comfortably to take the title. (Admittedly, Sevian had to play very riskily in that game, in a must-win situation with the black pieces.)

Congratulations to Wesley So, and for that matter to both Caruana and Sevian. Caruana finished the tournament very strongly, and nearly won it; while Sevian greatly outperformed his seeding.

Meanwhile, U.S. chess fans can look forward to a preposterously strong tournament next year. If all our top players play, we'll have Caruana, Levon Aronian, So, Leinier Dominguez, Hikaru Nakamura, Jeffery Xiong, and Sam Shankland in action, to name only our 2700-rated players. Hopefully they'll all play - or rather, hopefully all but one will play. It would be great if one of them will have qualified for next year's world championship match against the winner of the Magnus Carlsen vs. Ian Nepomniachtchi match starting next month.

Back from the future to the present (or more precisely, the extremely recent past). Today's games, with my mostly brief comments, are here. And here once again are the final standings:

1. So 6.5 (and 2-0) on tiebreaks
2-3. Caruana, Sevian 6.5 (despite Caruana's win over Sevian, they're still officially tied for second, and split their prize money equally)
4-6. Dominguez, Robson, Lenderman 6
7. Shankland 5.5
8-9. Swiercz, Burke 5
10-11. Xiong, Naroditsky 4.5
12. Bruzon 4