YaacovN secured an IM norm after 9 rounds with 1 round to play. Well, today in round 10 he beat GM Yuriy Kuzubov, FIDE 2622, with the white pieces to finish at 7.5/10 and a 2550+ rating performance. Great tournament for Yaacov. He'll be an IM in no time.
You left out that his win in round 10 gave him three GM scalps in five tries (with draws in the other two games against GMs). Also that he finished tied for 4th, half a point behind the three winners. The only black mark on an otherwise amazing tourney is dropping a full point to a 2131 rated FM in round 2, but in some ways the fact that he was able to bounce back from that game and end up with the result he got is perhaps the most impressive thing of all. Congratulations to Mr. Norowitz!
Great post BobJoeJim. I didn't realize any of that other stuff, but that's incredibly impressive. His games on ICC are a heck of a lot of fun to watch.
The other extremely impressive performance in this tournament was IM Wei Yi, who was the only player other than Yaacov to finish in the top nine without entering the tournament rated 2600+. Wei Yi earned his third and final GM norm in this event, which will make him the fourth youngest GM in the history of chess, as his 14th birthday is over three months in the future. His only loss was to co-champion Wesley So, he beat GM Baklan and super-GM Vachier-Lagrave, and drew two other super-GMs, on his way to 7.5/10 and a performance rating of 2661. Kudos, young man!
You left out that his win in round 10 gave him three GM scalps in five tries (with draws in the other two games against GMs). Also that he finished tied for 4th, half a point behind the three winners. The only black mark on an otherwise amazing tourney is dropping a full point to a 2131 rated FM in round 2, but in some ways the fact that he was able to bounce back from that game and end up with the result he got is perhaps the most impressive thing of all. Congratulations to Mr. Norowitz!
