Mille felicitazioni!

Stolen from Tom Panelas on Facebook (and you are already a member of the Chicago Area Chess  Facebook group, no?)

Congratulations to Marco Codenotti of Pisa, Italy, who reports that he’s just earned his IM title. Marco is a former Chicagoan, Hyde Parker, and student at William H. Ray Elementary School. His father told me a few years ago that Ray was the place where Marco started getting serious about chess. He played for the school in the 2005 CPS elementary school championships at Lane Tech, at least one or two of Mike Cardinale’s YCFC tournaments, and possibly one of Zack Fishman's Navy Pier events, though I’m not sure about the latter. He also did Wayne Smith’s summer chess camp at Kennicott Park in Kenwood. Marco is 15 or 16, which means he’s certainly on track to make GM in due course.

 International Master Marco Codenotti of Chicago Pisa

Tom had blogged about Marco as early as 2007.

Congratulations to Marco and his family!  (Well, we still have the Leaning Tower Y....)

Swiped from Carl Boor

...as originally posted on the Chicago Area Chess Facebook page:

Chicago Masters Dmitry Gurevich, Carl Boor, Gopal Menon, and Zach Kasiurak played this past weekend at the Cardinal Open in Columbus Ohio. Gurevich and Boor shared 2-3rd place behind Brazilian champion GM Andre Diamant. The tournament was excellently conducted with generous prizes and a higher attendance than projected. In addition to GM Gurevich and Diamont former US champions Alex Yermolinsky and Alexander Shabalov (upset by Boor in the final round) competed.

Menon lost only to GM Gurevich (he nicked GM Shabalov for a draw), and Kasiurak lost only to Shabalov.  The local competition is getting rather intimidating....

Nine-year-old David Peng also played and lost a few rating points: he's still comfortably higher rated than your 55-year-old blogger.

Crosstable here!

London Chess Classic winding up

Daniel Parmet, who is working the London Chess Classic for the second consecutive year, passes along this link to a charitable auction of LCC memorabilia.  As of now, the prices are reasonable!  (Warning: you'll be bidding against me in one of them.)  Daniel posted photos of the event via the Chicago Area Chess Facebook page.

As you can find out from the usual chess websites (ChessBase for example), Hikaru Nakamura is doing well in London, and Magnus Carlsen is playing phenomenally.

Lemonade from life's lemons

Recent events remind me to remind you to check out the Facebook group Chicago Area Chess.