Round 5 Standings and Round 6 Pairings

(US Championship organizer and sponsor Frank Berry of Stillwater, Oklahoma. Photo by MonRoi from last year's tournament.)

After five rounds, the tournament standings have settled down. The Grandmasters find themselves at their familiar location at the top of the pairings, followed by various lesser maestros. In fact, all but two of the 24 players with 3.5 or more have the GM, IM or FM title; the last two are rapidly improving NMs who will become FMs themselves soon.

The only guy at 4.5 is none other than GM Alex Yermolinsky, formerly the GM-in-Residence at the Mechanics' Institute in San Francisco, but now the highest rated resident of South Dakota. The group of nine with 4.0 includes Northern California players IM Vinay Bhat and NM Sam Shankland, who swindled IM Josh Friedel this evening. Two more locals have 3.5: IM David Pruess and FM Danya Naroditsky. I am stuck tied for 25th place at 3.0 points.

Here are the tentative pairings for round 6.

• GM Yermolinsky (4.5) vs GM Kraai (4.0)
• NM Shankland (4.0) vs GM Ivanov (4.0)
• GM Kudrin (4.0) vs IM Bercys (4.0)
• GM Fedorowicz (4.0) vs IM Bhat (4.0)
• FM Bick (4.0) vs IM Ippolito (4.0)
• GM Becerra (3.5) vs IM Bonin (3.5)
• GM Perelshteyn (3.5) vs NM Schoonmaker (3.5)
• FM Ludwig (3.5) vs IM Finegold (3.5)
• FM Kleiman (3.5) vs GM Goldin (3.5)
• IM Pruess (3.5) vs IM Burnett (3.5)
• IM Bradford (3.5) vs FM Beelby (3.5)
• FM Naroditsky (3.5) vs IM Brooks (3.5)
• IM Shipman (3.0) vs IM Friedel (3.0)
• NM Aigner (3.0) vs IM Robson (3.0)

The final two rounds are at 9:00am and 2:00pm Central time. You can watch the top boards live on ICC and on MonRoi website.