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The fifth day at the U.S. Junior championship was nothing like the peaceful fourth round. With all five games delivering decisive results, It was a great game to play with the White pieces as the White players accounted for a sweet 4 out of 5 wins!

The fourth day at the U.S. Junior Chess Championship signified a peaceful day of chess. With four draws and only one win, fairly little change took place in the overall standings.

The third day at the U.S. Junior was a day of revenge! Whilst top-seed Jeffery Xiong managed to take the sole lead after outplaying Michael Bodek, both Awonder Liang and Nicolas Checa recovered from their second round losses.

After an eventful first round in which the players were praised for their fighting spirit by commentators. FM Aviv Friedman and GM Ben Finegold, expectations were high for the second round.

Ruifeng Li faced off top seed Jeffery Xiong in a closed Sicilian. Black was quickly faced with a pawn storm heading straight for his King, and tried to counter attack in the centre. When the 15 year old grandmaster missed an opportunity to scatter Ruifeng's centre, he found himself forced to sacrifice a pawn in order to complicate matters.

SAINT LOUIS, June 16, 2016 -- The nation’s elite junior chess players are coming back to Saint Louis, the nation’s Chess Capital, this summer as the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis (CCSCSL) hosts the U.S. Junior Closed Championship July 7-18, 2016.

The 2016 Saint Louis Invitational ended with the same fighting chess seen throughout the whole tournament. The final round found FM Gauri Shankar needing a win to secure another IM norm as he faced off against FM Kostya Kavutskiy. As for the grandmaster norm tournament, IM Steven Zierk wanted to avenge his eighth round loss and pull even with IM Akshat Chandra for a share of first place.

IM Zierk played with the White pieces against GM Ben Finegold in a mainline Caro-Kann. Pressing for an advantage, Zierk sacrificed on h6 cracking open black’s kingside.

As the 2016 Saint Louis Invitational winds to a close, the players with hopes of gaining their norms found difficulty in Round 8. Three players still had a chance to earn GM norms going into the round. IM Steven Zierk had the Black pieces against IM Ruifeng Li and needed to win to keep his chances alive.

The 2016 Saint Louis Invitational, featuring both a GM and IM norm 10-player round robin, is more than halfway finished. Norm seekers in both sections have traded blows with their opponents and resulted in a very tight standings list. Each field’s norm requirement sits at 6.5 total points and still a few have the chance, if they finish well, to earn their norm.

After round seven of the 2016 Saint Louis Invitational, three players are still in contention to earn a GM norm. IM Irene Sukandar, IM Akshat Chandra, and IM Steven Zierk all stand at 4.5 points with two rounds to go. That means each needs to win their final two games to achieve the norm. Round 7 saw IM Sukandar play against IM Zierk in a tactical battle. Sukandar with the white pieces was able to covert an exchange French after Zierk overestimated the strength of an advanced d-pawn.