National Open Day 1

FM Danya Naroditsky impressively drew against Israeli GM Sergey Erenburg tonight in round 2 of the National Open. He now has 1.5/2 and will probably face another strong opponent in the morning. Also look for an exciting new article about Danya in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle. You can find it in the magazine insert.I lost a strange Ruy Lopez game to GM-elect Josh Friedel tonight. I was losing out of the opening, but Josh didn't put me out of my misery until a flurry of tactics right before time control. Click here to review it in Chess Publisher's game viewer. Josh now has 2.0/2 and I have 1.0/2. NM Sam Shankland lost badly to GM Tigran Petrosian and he also has 1.0/2. Although IM David Pruess sat next to me, he was still playing when I left and I do not know how his game ended up.

Click here for tournament results and pairings. Some, but not all, of the top games are being broadcast live on the MonRoi website. Check out Susan Polgar's chess blog for photos from each round (thanks to photographer FM Paul Truong for the above pictures).

For me, one fun part of traveling to a big tournament is meeting a variety of chess celebrities. Here's just a partial list of masters living outside of the Bay Area whom I have spoken with so far: GM Hikaru Nakamura, GM Tigran Petrosian, GM Melik Khachiyan, GM Susan Polgar, WGM Jennifer Shahade, IM Ben Finegold, IM Ray Robson, IM Joe Bradford, FM Robby Adamson, FM Paul Truong and FM Sunil Weeramantry.

Trivia question: Which of the above people are from the same family? There are two pairs of answers. Post a comment to this post or send a message to "fpawn" on ICC.

Update on Saturday morning: David Pruess drew last night and has 1.5/2. The most interesting round 3 pairings are Kamsky-Paragua, Friedel-Nakamura, Akobian-Robson, Yermolinsky-Naroditsky and Aigner-Akopian.