Cute miniature, cute story

Reigning Chicago Open champion Loek Van Wely got crushed by Hikaru Nakamura today at the NH Youth versus Experience tournament.  Before you read Ian Rogers's hilarious report on Chess Life Online, see if you can solve this quiz:

 White to play and win

(there are at least two solutions; which line is most forcing?)

Nakamura and Anish Giri are now tied for the youth lead, but Hikaru still has to play both Svidler and Gelfand....

Wonderful rook endgame lesson

GM Joel Benjamin lectures on today's game between Chicago Open champion Loek Van Wely and U.S. #1 Hikaru Nakamura.

The wily Nakamura drew a dead-lost ending today.  Crank up the air conditioning, grab a glass of iced tea, and enjoy!

Congratulations to Loek Van Wely!

The Dutch grandmaster recently wrote an article for New in Chess about his American travels: playing in US events was a good way to spend time with special Facebook friends, but not an especially good way for unlucky Loek to make money (I'm paraphrasing from memory).

This Memorial Day weekend, however, Van Wely won six games and drew three: 7.5 points was good for 10,000 and clear first in the Chicago Open!

The event was strong enough to attract attention in Armenia.  (Translation here.)

My general impression: aside from tournament visitor Yury Shulman (who's been doing his part lately), we in Chicago need to up our level of play to compete with the rest of the world.  GM Mesgen Amanov was the top local finisher with 6 points out of 9.

Among local juniors in the Open Section, Adarsh Jayakumar drew GMs Ehlvest and Lein, and could have drawn GM Finegold (coulda woulda shoulda), NM Eric Rosen dropped IM Daniel Fernandez.  Tommy Ulrich had an even score after five rounds and gained a ton of rating points.

I scored 2 points out of 7 and appear to have gained a few points!

More results from the other sections as soon as I recover from my "chess hangover."  Full results here!