| Sally Simpson: Hi epistle, "simply mirroring the posts at his own page" Wes is probably staring at himself in the mirror right now. 'Why me......Why is everyone playing their best game of the tournament against me?" He's in danger of becoming a new Milan Vidmar who lost games in such an instructive fashion you often find his name in Best Game collections. Alekhine, Lasker, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Najdorf, Tartakower... And Vidmar was no mug at the game, an amateur player and Capablanca when he was World Champion is on record as saying if Vidmar devoted himself full time to chess then his crown would be in danger. That's quite a comment coming from Capablanca.
The Game.
As a King's Indian die hard it never matters whose playing, I always plug for Black. A question raised earlier.
Why 19.Na3 here.
click for larger viewIt's to tempt the b-pawn forward to stop that Knight going c4 thus given White the c6 square. (as what happened in the game.) Right decision/wrong decision?
The score says possibly a wrong decision and it is this battle of judgements where the game hung. Nak knew he was ceding c6 and with it the whole c-file by keeping the Knight on a3 when he played b5. Wes knew he'd have a poor Knight but the square c6 and with it the c-file. It takes two to tango to produce a game like this, I read on another thread Wes is out of form. No excuses, out of luck but not out of form, if he was he'd know it and would have played 7.dxe5, (and have me screaming foul play at the screen) he's playing OK, somebody is going get in the neck OTB when his ideas click and gel. He threw down the first critical question on the table. No point in asking Nakamura to do that, he knew what he was going to do, attack like a rabid dog on the Kingside. What a great pity Nak missed the three piece mate. that would have been a truly wonderful wrap up. I bet if that was the only way to win and there was no other good move in the position Nak would have found it. Wes allowed the mate. Some players do, I did if I thought my opponent played a good game. It ties it all up neatly and saves some here from switching on a box to see how it could have ended. Good Game.
Onto the Mini-match: USA v The Rest of the World.
With Wes So ensuring his name appears in Nakamura's collection of best games this was a USA v USA game so does not count. The only game that mattered was the Grischuk v Caruana game and Grischuk won. Current running Score.
USA 5 - ROW 9
The Next round pairings are:
Anand — So
Caruana — Vachier-Lagrave
Nakamura — Aronian
The games not taking part in the min-match.
Carlsen — Grischuk and Topalov — Giri | 
Kibitzing
sac: 30...hxg3
