Cool new feature on MSA

The U.S. Chess Federation's Member Services Area keeps improving each month!

If you visit Adarsh Jayakumar's MSA page, you'll find out that as of the April 2011 rating list (already out), Adarsh is ranked #374 among all active players in the US, and #59 among juniors.

Eric Rosen is #354 in the nation, #55 among juniors.

Sadly, Yury Shulman does not make the top juniors list, but he's tied for 6th in the nation.

It works for mere bloggers, too.

Hat tip to the South Suburban Chess Club of Greater Chicago for calling this to our attention, and thanks to Mike Nolan for his hard work!

March Madness in Skokie

 Penny Yu vs. Sam Schmakel

Brad Rosen takes a look at the big weekend ahead.  ICA sponsors three different invitational youth championships this weekend!  Stop by the North Shore Chess Center for a glimpse of the action!  (But be aware that access to the tournament floor may be limited.)

Perhaps the blogger quoted in the article meant his last sentence ironically, signalling that he had run out of tired clichés.  But these young men and women are truly brilliant, hard-working, and nice people.

Korchnoi at 80

 Age is just a number: Korchnoi beat Fabiano Caruana just a couple months ago!

Coverage at ChessBase and ChessVibes.

French players suspended for cheating

The French Chess Federation has suspended GMs Sebastian Feller and Arnaud Hauchard, and IM Cyril Marzolo, concluding that they cheated during the September 2010 Olympiad held in Khanty-Mansiysk. Here is how they allegedly did so:

[A]ccording to Jean-Claude Moingt the cheat the system went as follows: Cyril Marzolo sent SMS text messages with phone numbers which functioned as code. The first two digits were always 06, the following two were the number the move, the 5th and 6th figures would refer to the starting square, the 7th and 8th to the ending square, and finally, two counts of no importance. For example: 06 01 52 54 37, 06 01 57 55 99, 06 02 71 63 84, 06 02 67 65 43 are the codes for the moves constituting the Latvian Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f5). This is actually the international notation of correspondence chess.
Arnaud Hauchard kept the two phones with him: his own and that of Sebastien Feller. He consulted and then returned to the bar at the venue. The way to indicate moves to Feller was as follows: the opponent of Vachier-Lagrave: A and 1, the opponent of Fressinet: B and 2, the opponent of Tkachiev: C and 3, the opponent of Feller: D and 4, Feller: E and 5, Tkachiev: F and 6, Fressinet: G and 7 and finally Vachier Lagrave: H and 8. For example if Arnaud Hauchard revolved around the table and stopped some time behind the opponent Tkachiev, and then behind that of Fressinet, he was signalling square c2.

ChessBase and ChessVibes (the source of the above quotation) have more. Just two months before the Olympiad, Feller (then rated 2611) had won the Paris Championship with an 8-1 score and an "amazing" 2859 performance rating. One has to wonder whether that result was legitimate.

Angelo Young, Andrew Karklins tie for first in St. Louis

Angelo even took first on tiebreaks; the field included GMs Kudrin and Finegold.

Crosstable here!

Story here!