Ben's Blog: Russia Rebounds

This round saw a setback for the U.S. team as Russia seemed out for blood after their painful loss to lowly Greece. The U.S. team had bad positions out of the opening on boards three and four, and could not recover. Hikaru Nakamura tried to get a murky position against Alexander Grischuk, but the Russian player kept things under control, and the game was relatively equal throughout.

Alexander Onischuk seemed to have a worse position against Alexander Morozevich, but ended up holding the draw in the end.

Varuzhan Akobian messed up the move order in a sharp opening, and ended up being down a pawn, with few prospects. Var defended a long and difficult ending, but ended up losing. The best game was Vladimir Malakhov's nice sacrificial win against the sleepless Yury Shulman (Yury has been having trouble sleeping). Malakhov has been on fire the last few months, and I would not be surprised if he is in the top 10 in the world by 2011. USA loses to Russia 3-1.

Malakhov (2716) vs. Shulman (2624)