US Championships begin today!

Live coverage begins at 2 p.m. today at www.saintlouischessclub.org.

While virtually all of the top players are familiar to Chicagoans, we've got two local heroes representing us this year:

GM Yury Shulman has White today against GM Vinay Bhat

GM Dmitry Gurevich (below right) has Black today against GM Larry Christiansen (below left)

 ...should be an interesting game... (photo Betsy Dynako)

You can compete vicariously by forming a fantasy chess team at the USCF web site (only a couple hours left!)

And you'll find coverage of yesterday's opening ceremony at Chess Life Online.

Two more Anand interviews

Although they're on the French site Europe Echecs, the interviews are in English.  (Anand is fluent in English, Spanish, and (I would assume!) Tamil, and speaks more-than-passable German; don't know if he does French, too.)

Interesting tidbit from the first interview: Anand did miss the ...h6+! drawing idea in game 8 (he saw the move, but didn't understand its significance during the game).  More analysis of game 8 here by GM Robert Fontaine at chessanytime.com.

Chicagoland tournaments this weekend!

Saturday 5/15/10:

McHenry Area Swiss

Orland Park Scholastic

Sunday 5/16/10:

Knights Quest #53

Details on the Illinois Chess Association's tournament page (as always!).

Anand interview

With rediff.com.

Shipov on Game 12

Via Dana Blogs Chess.

World Championship tactics

This position could have occurred in today's game if White had played 41.Rxa8:

Topalov-Anand, game 12 (variation after 41.Rxa8)

Black to play and win

Hint: Black's Christmas list might include eliminating a certain defensive piece, then clearing the way for yet another piece, no matter the cost.

Anish Giri explains at ChessBase.  Interactive board here.

"Half Day takes it all the way"

The five-member team from Half Day School in Lincolnshire are coming home with the first place trophy in the K5 Championship Division at the just concluded National Elementary Championships.  The top four scorers--Alex Bian, Conrad Oberhaus, James Wei and Jack Xiao--whose points are counted toward the team total, collectively had just two losses in the whole tournament.  All four are 2010 ICA Warren Scholars.  

Andi Rosen reports on the ICA website.  (Currently on home page: I'll add a permalink later.)

Now would be a good time to donate to the Warren Junior Program!

Vishy rules Sofia!

Anand wins!

I was not-so-discreetly checking chesspro.ru on my iPhone during a business meeting today....

Congratulations to Anand, and applause to both players for an entertaining match with minimal intrigue.

(Speaking of which, a certain musical about excessive intrigue at World Championship matches was just nominated for multiple Jeffs...)

World Championship game 12

Going on right now: it's a good one!

Today's winner is World Champion: if it's a draw, tiebreaks on Thursday.

World Championship tactics

Anand-Topalov

2010 World Championship

After 61.Rc3 (Black to move)

Please find a good move for Black!

Last of a generation

In 1950, FIDE awarded the modern grandmaster title to 27 players.  Andor Lilienthal, the last survivor among the original grandmasters, died last week at the age of 99.

More on Grandmaster Lilienthal in the ChessBase obituary and Wikipedia article; also see Kasparov's appreciation in My Great Predecessors, Part 4.  Frederick Rhine tells me that Lilienthal was one of the last surviving players (and by far the strongest player) with a Morphy number of 3.

There was a moment of silence in Lilienthal's honor before Game 11 of the World Championship yesterday.

MCA FIDE Futurity XI - after the first weekend

In the advanced duffers' event, Gaddiel Tan takes the early lead.  The handicappers' consensus is that I am old and tired and have no chance to keep up with him.

DGT North American Chess Clock

 

If price is not an issue, I'd still buy the Chronos Chess Clock.  But if you're too cheap to spend more than $100 on a Chronos (that's the story of my life), or if you're the parent of an absent-minded genius who tends to lose things, the $40 DGT North American is an excellent option.  

The DGT supports both the "traditional" delay and the more recent bonus (Fischer) mode common in international play and in local events like the 2009 Illinois Open.  Unlike the Chronos, the DGT North American cannot be used to crush the skull of your opponent.  The DGT's light plastic housing is more convenient, but probably somewhat less durable.  The settings seem somewhat easier to master than the Chronos's settings.

I used them this weekend, liked them, and bought two from Sevan Muradian.  If I played a lot of blitz, I would go for the Chronos, but the DGT North American seems ideal for tournament play.

Anish Giri annotates Game 11

At ChessBase.

 Interactive JavaScript board is here.

National champions!

Congratulations to the team from Lincolnshire's Half Day School, winners of the National Elementary (K-5) Championships in Atlanta, Georgia, this weekend. Team members Alex Bian and Conrad Oberhaus tied for second overall, while James Wei tied for seventh and Jack Xiao scored +3 to finish 38th in a 272-player field. Good job!

And congratulations to Anshul Adve of Champaign's Countryside School, who also tied for seventh.

 P.S.  All these young Illinois players are fourth-graders and eligible to compete in next year's event (except for Jack Xiao, who's a third-grader...)

No. Name                         Gr Team   St Rate Pts 
  1 Beilin, Allan                 5 CARN01 CA 1833 6.5 
  2 Arora, Mayhul                 5 WASTEV WA 1541 6.0 
  3 Bian, Alex                    4 ILL004 IL 1806 6.0
  4 Zhao, Art                     4 CASTMK CA 1693 6.0
  5 Oberhaus, Conrad              4 ILL004 IL 1676 6.0
  6 Ishikawa, Takayuki            4 NYBROW NY 1488 6.0
  7 Lim, Michael                  5 NJG002 NJ 1742 5.5
  8 Viswanadha, Kesav             5 CAC018 CA 1916 5.5
  9 Jacob, Andrew                 5 TXLAUR TX 1641 5.5
 10 Wang, Patrick                 5 WASTEV WA 1716 5.5
 11 Adve, Anshul                  4 ILCSID IL 1622 5.5
 12 Yu, Justin J                  5 WAB004 WA 1636 5.5
 13 Wei, James                    4 ILL004 IL 1805 5.5
 14 Gianatasio, Michael           5 FLB001 FL 1710 5.5
 15 Goldstein, Ben                4 NYDALT NY 1533 5.5
 16 Tao, Jeffrey                  4 CAS047 CA 1599 5.5
 17 Kalyanpur, Armaan             5 CAMSJE CA 1594 5.5
 18 Santoyo, Edgar A              5 TXBAP1 TX 1467 5.5

...

 38 Xiao, Jack                    3 ILL004 IL 1426 5.0

This weekend's feature event

...even more important than that silly little match in Sofia, is the 26th North American Masters, held in the same location as the MCA FIDE Futurity.  I stopped by the site early and said hello to organizer Sevan Muradian and the nattily-dressed Jon Burgess.

Kibitzers welcome.  Don't forget about Mom!

MCA FIDE Futurity XI begins tonight...

A good chess player always makes his excuses pre-event: I haven't played for months and I'm rusty!

Step by this weekend to say hello and kibitz at the Skokie Holiday Inn. Thanks to Chris Baumgartner and MCA for organizing the event for us fish. Details here.  The format is very cool: it's a 9-round round robin: five games this weekend and four more in June.

 

MCA FIDE Futurity XI	FIDE	USCF
Brock, Bill	2007	2009
Tutush, Dusan	1962	2028
Stone, George	1926	1773
Blackman, William	1848	1897
Penway, Mike		1591
Delay, Joe		1699
Vecanski, Dragomir		1732
Cohen, Fredric		1777
Robledo, Mark, Jr.		1987
Tan, Gaddiel		2049

Anish Giri on Game 9

Check it out on ChessBase!

Interactive board.

Game 9 notes at ChessVibes

Good stuff.

Nice positional exchange sac!

Don't miss Vince Hart's annotated game.

Still thinking about Tuesday's game

....and endings with bishops of opposite color.

In his Internet Chess Club commentary, GM Har-Zvi mentioned the famous Flohr-Bothvinnik game from the 1955 Soviet Championship as a wonderful example of the principles behind opposite-color bishop endings.  It's not so important who has more pawns; it's more important to have more than one threat, ideally on opposite sides of the board.

Flohr-Botvinnik, USSR (ch), 1955

Black to play and win

An unpleasant memory

The endgame reached in today's Game 9 of the World Championship was painful for us Anand fans: Anand missed more than one clear win, and had to settle for a trivially drawn two rooks plus f-pawn vs. queen ending.  It was doubly painful for me, as I once had a winning version of the same ending against my friend Tam Nguyen.  I should have lost, but Tam was feeling merciful....

Malcolm Pein on Game 8

At ChessBase.

And here's an interactive version of the same article.

The Harikrishna Variation, continued

Topalov-Anand

World Championship, Game 8, May 4, 2010

Black to play resigned

When Anand resigned, many of the spectators were mystified.  Can you figure out how White wins by force?

Many of your questions will be answered by the analysis at ChessVibes (which references Sergey Shipov's analysis session with special guest Garry Kasparov).

A critical position

MrHat notes that after 54.Kg5, Anand could have defended with 54....Bd3 55.g4 Ke8 56.f4 Kd7. 

White to play

How do you evaluate the position after 57.f5?  (The question mark is for you, not for the move.)

The Harikrishna Variation

"TomCruise" on the Internet Chess Club (GM Pentala Harikrishna) analyzed the position after White's 44th move long before it occurred in the game.

Topalov-Anand

World Championship, Game 8, May 4, 2010

After 44.h5: Black to play

Black has two moves that don't lose material immediately: 44....Be8 and 44...gxh5.  Which move would you make?

Anand found the drawing move, but went wrong later.  This position may become a classic in endgame books.

"....just like in the movies"

MrHat opines on Black's best move in the following position:

Topalov-Anand, 2010 World Championship

Game 8, May 4, 2010

Black to play after 41.Bd4+

cute tactical sideline from today's game

Courtesy "MrHat" on ICC (GM Joel Benjamin).

 White to play and win

(There's actually more than one way to win, but there's only one best way.)

"...Anand played the only losing move"

An absolutely stunning blunder by Anand.  Momentum to Topalov!

Future grandmaster?

Congratulations to the Greengard family!

The perils of Pauline

White to play and win

Here's a cute tactic (based on a possible variation from an Anand-Topalov game a few days ago; the same combination was relevant in the Shirov-Dominguez game from this year's Corus).

How Did I Do So Well?

I received a lovely e-mail today (actually a few weeks ago: I overlooked Vince's entry during tax season!--BB) from the Chicago Industrial Chess League which read as follows:

All,

Please join me in congratulating Vince Hart from Excaliburs on being this year's North Division MVP. Vince went 6-0-2 on the season with multiple incredible wins. This resulted in +102 rating points, which is especially impressive at the level Vince is.

Once again... Great job, Vince! Please share your method with the rest of us...

Jim Thomson
North Division Chairman

I really wish I could share my method, but I am not really sure why I beat Robert Morris, Florin Inumerable, and Yuri Fridkin who sport CICL ratings of 2211, 2223, and 2189. I don't really think that I am that good.

One of the things that I think has helped my game a great deal is working with high school students. Several of the players I coach are very aggressive and always want to attack, but I have been trying to explain to them that an attack is much more likely to be successful for the player who has an advantage in development and that they should be wary of opening up a position when their opponent’s pieces are well developed. In my game with Florian Inumerable, I saw the opportunity for an interesting exchange sacrifice and even though I could not calculate all the possibilities, I relied on the fact that Florian had wasted a little too much time in the opening. Neither of us played flawlessly thereafter, but I think I won mostly because my position was easier to play.

Did Anand miss a win?

Anand-Topalov

2010 World Championship, Game 7

White to play

Anand played the sensible 42.Qb7+.  ChessVibes quotes Shipov's cool idea 42.Qa4! (42...d2? 43.Qc2+ wins).  But 42...Qd5+ 43.Kf1 Qe6 44.Qa2! (pinning the c-pawn) and now FireBird suggests 44...Kf7! (relieving the pin: it's important for Black to control the e3 square).

Story & more at ChessVibes.

Chicago Industrial Chess League event this Saturday!

Wow, lots of tournaments this weekend!  (I'm playing in one of two invitational events in Skokie that I haven't even mentioned yet....)  Find out more about the Chicago Industrial Chess League here!

CICL Individual Tournament 

To be played Saturday May 8 starting at 9:00am at the Thai Buddhist Temple, vic. 75th & Harlem in Chicago

Format: 3 round Swiss tournament, with multiple sections as needed 

Time Control: G/60

  

Time & Date: Arrive by 8:45am sharpon Saturday May 8. Rounds expected to be at 9:10am, 11:10am and 2:10pm.

Location:  Wat Dhammaram (The Thai Buddhist Temple), 7059 W. 75th Street, Chicago, IL  60638-5934

75th St just east of Harlem (Rt. 43). 

Entry Fee: none

Prizes: $30 for 1^st place and $20 for 2^nd place of each section. (But only for 1st place if the section has less than 7 players). All prizes are only in gift certificates or trophy (your choice).. If the value of a prize is less than $10 due to ties, cash only may be issued. Only members of the CICL are eligible for prizes..

  

Registration: Please pre-register by sending email to TD Tony Jasaitis with Chess Tournament in the subject line.If unrated, please provide an estimate of rating.

Eligibility: This tourney is open to all CICL members, and also open to all potential, future CICL members. You must be 16 years of age or older to play in this tournament. USCF membership is not required. 

Ratings: Games are rated by the CICL for CICL members. Games add to CICL members' Centurion game count. Games  are not rated by the USCF. Where reasonable, paring of unrated players will be avoided to hep them get ratings quicker. 

Chess equipment: Please bring a chess set and chess clock.. 

Note; the TD's top priority is the Playoffs Tournament.

World Championship: another great game today

Game drawn; Anand leads, 4-3.  Topalov played a known Exchange sac, uncorked a novelty, then increased the sacrifice to a full piece (for a monster d-pawn).  Anand consolidated, but Topalov retained enough counterplay to draw.

Annotations at ChessBase.  

Chess Without Borders on Global Youth Service Day

Kiran Frey reports on Chess Life Online

A famous Capablanca combination

To warm up your brain before watching the World Championship Monday morning! Game 7 begins 7 a.m. Chicago time.

 

Capablanca-Tanerow, New York 1910

White to play and win

Free scholastic event next Saturday, May 8, at Bateman School!

Details are here: if your child would like to play, please follow the instructions!  Bateman School is in the Irving Park neighborhood.

I've heard nothing but good things about the Youth Chess Foundation of Chicago events.

Nice game/30 minutes event on Southwest Side next Saturday

If 63rd and Central-ish is your neck of the woods, there may be a place for you next Saturday, May 8, at A Place for Us.

Details, as always, on the ICA Tournament Calendar.

World Championship, Games 4-6

With the match half over, the score in Sofia, Bulgaria , is 3½ points for World Champion Viswanathan Anand and 2½ ponts for former champ Veselin Topalov.  In games 5 and 6, both Anand and Topalov played at an extremely high level.  But if you're an amateur like me, you don't have to feel guilty about skipping these very interesting draws.

But Anand's sudden and brilliant attack win in Game 4 is fascinating: please don't skip that!  Everyone's favorite teenage Dutch GM of Nepalese/Russian ancestry, Anish Giri, annotates on ChessBase.  (Interactive board here.)

More free English-language coverage at the official site and here: 

• The Week in Chess
• US Chess Online
• ChessBase (round 6 and round 5)
• Dejan Bojkov's blog
• ChessVibes (game 6 and game 5)

And there's good gossip as always at The Daily Dirt.

Tomorrow is a rest day: play continues at 7 a.m. Chicago time on Monday, May 3, with Anand having White a second consecutive time.

Cute

Arbakov-Vyzmanavian, Moscow 1981
White to play and win

In The Complete Hedgehog, Volume 1 (my Saturday afternoon pleasure reading) Shipov observes that White's winning move is a "standard shot, from a child's book of tactics, but it's easy to miss over the board."

Illinois Chess Association Youth Committee

Find out what they're up to at the ICA website.

Basic Mates from _The Middle Game in Chess_ (3)

Before the computer age, even World Championship contenders made minor errors in beginners' books.  Fine was right to find a mate in 7, but he missed a mate in 3.

White to play and mate in less than ten moves

(it can be done in three moves!)

Sofia "rules"

Anand can be very funny in his low-key fashion.  Video from ChessVibes.

Game 4 begins at 7 a.m. Chicago time.

Bulgarian blogger

Ian Rogers compiles interesting sites for you to get your daily World Championship fix.  Here's one I hadn't seen before:

[...] Bulgarian GM Dejan Bojkov dejanbojkov.blogspot.com/ [...] has the advantage of attending the match and writing after watching the nightly Bulgarian television programme on the match.

Bojkov's comments (making allowances for his writing in a foreign language) are indeed very astute.  I've read a lot of nonsense on 15.Qa3!? (or 15.Qa3?!, if you prefer), but Bojkov gets to the point:

[Anand's] idea is obvious, White is clearing the d6 square, and is getting rid of the strong defender on e7. On the other hand he exchanges pieces, and doubles his pawns, which are serious drawbacks. But I believe that this is part of Anand's general strategy in this match- he will look for dry positions, with long-lasting initiative as White, and try to force Topalov to defend as long as possible, to torture him. Something similar did Boris Spassky, in his match against Mikhail Tal in 1969.

Round 3 was a draw: Anish Giri wraps up on ChessBase.

Nakamura traded to the Cardinals

Bad news for Cubs fans? 

Good news for U.S. chess!

Basic Mates from _The Middle Game in Chess_ (2)

 White to play and win

I'm told that discovered checks are strong...which one is strongest?

Game 2 press conference

From ChessVibes: Here's the Game 2 link.

The embed below is to Game 1 (I couldn't get Game 2 to work).

Both Anand and Topalov spend much of the year in Spain: Anand's Spanish is excellent.

Game 3 at 7 a.m. Chicago time!

Rook endings on You Tube

Matt Pullin takes a look at Aaron-Robatsch, Varna 1962.  (After 1...Bd4, I think 2.Bf4 might be the most stubborn defense.)




And in the second video on this ending, where is Black's forced win after the bizarre-looking 4.Kh4!? (instead of 4.Rc2, which I think makes the win easy)? I'm pretty sure that Black should win, but the direct encircling maneuver fails to a White counterattack on d6.

Chess Club at Willye B. White Park Recreation Center (Rogers Park)

Via Rogers Park in 1,000 Words:

Chess Club at Willye B. White Park Recreation Center Fridays from April 2nd - June 4th, 2010 6:30pm - 8:30pm / Ages 21 and Over Willye B. White Park Recreation Center 1610 W. Howard Street Chicago, IL 60626

Basic Mates from _The Middle Game in Chess_

In the late 1930s, GM Reuben Fine was a top contender for the World Championship.  Here are a few problems from his 1952 book The Middle Game in Chess.  (The book was republished in 1993, but the Amazon reviews of that edition suggest that it's full of typographical errors.) 
I learned a lot from this book as a teenager, and picked up a copy of the 1952 edition on eBay.

White to play and win

As a rule of thumb, it's not good to be down by a queen, knight, and pawn....

South Suburban Chess Club of Greater Chicago

From their Facebook page:

The SSCC meets every Friday night from 7-10:30PM at the community center at 110th & Kilpatrick, Oak Lawn, IL. Open to all. Sponsored by the Oak Lawn Park District.

The SSCC has a Swiss event yesterday: my friend William Blackman won with a 3-0 score.

Fire / Firebird

Fire 1.2 (untested by me) is a very strong open-source chess engine.  I just learned of it a couple weeks ago, and had hesitated to post a link because the Rybka team has claimed that it's based on a reverse compile of Rybka.  Since then, however, I've seen no evidence supporting this claim, and know of no pending legal claims in any jurisdiction.  (If credible evidence is provided, I will promptly remove the following link.)  And I just heard GM Peter Svidler vouch for its strength on Chess FM.

It's free, and it's extremely strong.  You can download here. 

Anand wins Game 2

Topalov was in very good shape out of the opening (don't blame Yury Shulman!), but Anand simply outplayed him in a queenless middlegame.

Coverage at The Week in Chess, Chess Life Online, ChessBase (with extremely instructive notes by teenage GM Anish Giri), ChessPro (in Russian), Crestbook (GM Sergey Shipov, in Russian; I'm told his commentary is being translated here), Europe Echecs (in French), and ChessVibes (on site in Sofia). I've been following Peter Svidler's commentary on Chess FM, but an ICC membership is required for that.  And of course, you'll find high-quality gossip and occasionally NSFW trash-talking, as always, at The Daily Dirt.

Australian GM Ian Rogers, providing coverage for The Hindu in Anand's hometown of Chennai, has some post-mortem comments by the players.

You can see the game (accompanied by video and English-language commentary during play) at the official site.

Monday is a rest day.  Game 3 begins at 7 a.m. Chicago time Tuesday.

Anand vs. Shulman

Game 2 of the World Championship is underway right now: you can follow the action at The Week in Chess (delayed broadcast), ChessPro (live, but in Russian), or the official site.

Topalov is following a game of our own Yury Shulman from the 2008 U.S. Championship:

Topalov wins Game 1 of World Championship

A very weird first game. Many masters speculated that Anand had prepared the move 23...Bd7 (to be followed by ...Kf7 in a couple moves), but simply forgot the move order.

Nice win for Topalov, but he barely had to think. More coverage at Chess Life Online.

Rachel Ulrich at Hales Corners

 Rachel Ulrich

 Oh, and Stamnov, too.

Field finalized for 2010 U.S. Championship

At Chess Life Online.

Chicagoland is ably represented this year by GM Yury Shulman and GM Dmitry Gurevich.  And GM Jesse Kraai is an alumnus of Shimer College (not to mention Jena and Heidelberg).

High School Nationals (ouch)

When I'm blogging during an event, but go silent after the last round, that usually means I didn't like the results.  Congratulations to the ten co-champions, none of whom were from Illinois.  Coverage at Chess Life Online.

Both Michael Auger and Adarsh Jayakumar had a clear shot at a piece of the national title.   I haven't seen Adarsh's game yet, but Michael was clearly winning.....

Notes updated 4/22/10

Stockfish

Commercial chess engines (Rybka, Fritz, Chessmaster) are amazingly strong, but they cost serious money. But there are also very strong engines that are freeware. Mig Greengard discusses several in this blog post, including Stockfish, which you can download here.

Please note that if you don't have a commercial interface (Fritz, Shredder, Aquarium), you'll need to download a UCI interface.  I'm told that Arena (download here) is a good free interface for Windows users.  More information (but not much more!) is available on the Stockfish FAQ page.

So how strong is Stockfish? Engines are funny things: the ancient version of Fritz (6.0) on my office PC solves the following position  almost immediately, Rybka takes a second or two, but Stockfish takes a while to find the solution.  That doesn't necessarily mean that Stockfish is weaker, however.  When there's a forced variation with several "studylike" moves and a main line more than ten moves deep, the stronger engine will sometimes take more time to find the correct solution: aggressive alpha-beta pruning eliminates "silly" moves from the computer's search.  Sometimes silly moves are brilliant, but more often they're not. 

We humans are much better at making these judgment calls; our silicon friends are millions of times faster than us, however.

A test position (my favorite study!)

FEN: 2b4k/8/5Pr1/5N2/8/8/8/K1B5 w - - 0 1

Korol'kov 1951
White to play and win

This beautiful study is worth thirty minutes of your time.  Understanding why certain moves don't work is (as usual in a study) a big part of the fun.  You can then cut and paste the Forsythe notation into your chess engine to get its answer.  Please let me know your performance results!

There's a YouTube video explaining this study.

Road trip

On ChessBase.



View Larger Map

You can't have a world championship match without a soap opera subplot

Anand (currently in Germany) requests a force majeure postponement due to the Icelandic volcano: all flights in Northern Europe are grounded.

Given the extraordinary circumstances, a three-day delay seems reasonable, but what will Danailov and FIDE do?

UPDATE: in case you thought I was being cynical.

Evanston - Touch Move box score

Unofficial results of this friendly match

Evanston Chess Club          Touch Move Chess Club

Aleksandar Stamnov   0-1      Mariano Acosta
Rick Lang                   ½-½    Florentino Inumerable
Matt Pullin                   1-0     Arandel Markovic
Bill Brock                    1-0     Virgillio Forro
Dmitri Sergatskov        0-1     Rene Ancheta
Mark Jutovsky             0-1     Fred Cohen
Paul Gafni                   ½-½    George Stone
Mark Parnably             1-0     Noel Martin
Mateus Szulc                1-0     Rick Lutzke
Mark Spitzig                 0-1     Dan Leroy
Tim Grassel                   1-0    Jay Smalls
Bruce Pot ratz               0-1    Christian Kavouras

There was an "extra" game that would not have broken the tie:

Michael Wishner           ½-½      Rob Morrison

Evanston Chess Club vs. Touch Move Chess Center

International Master Angelo Young hosted a very nice event at the Touch Move Chess Center today: TMCC and the Evanston Chess Club played to a 6-6 tie.

Thanks for the pizza and bottled water, Angelo!

National High School, Round 6

Cool!  Both Michael Auger and Adarsh Jayakumar have a chance to tie for first in this event.  And so does a Missouri player well-known to Chicagoans, seventh-grader (!!) Kevin Cao.

Kristopher Meekins of Ohio leads the event with a perfect 6-0, one full point ahead of the field.  But he's playing #1 seed Shinsaku Usesugi of Maryland.  So good chances for the 5-1 players!

"Four GMs tie for first in St. Louis Open"

Great coverage at Chess Life Online.

Two of our local grandmasters were very much in the running for first (not easy when Nakamura is playing!), but Dmitry Gurevich lost to GM Robert Hess in round 4 and Mesgen Amanov lost to GM Josh Friedel in round 5.

Very impressive crosstable!

Illinois players at National Junior High School - final results

Several Illinois players tied for fifth place in the National Junior High School championships in Minneapolis last weekend.  Congratualtions to Maximillian Zinski (who's gained 199 rating points in the past ten days), Gavin McClanahan, and Jimi Daniel Akintonde (who knocked off a player rated more than four hundred points higher in the last round!).  All three players are seventh-graders with one more shot at the title....

St. Michael's School in Wheaton (Zinski, Nathaniel Kranjc, Grant Kozeny, and Joseph Ives) took 11th place 

Results are here: click on "K-8 Championship."

Illinois players at Nation High School (after five rounds)

Quick notes on the action in Columbus, Ohio.

Michael Auger (2145) was tied for the lead after four rounds, but lost in round five to top seed Shinsaku Uesugi (2370) of Maryland.  With 4 points, Michael still has a (remote) chance to tie for first; Whitney Young HS is currently in 15th place in the team standings.

Eric Rosen (2220) was upset by an A player in the first round, but he has 3.5 points with good pairing chances to finish at or above 5 points.  Niles North is three points off the team lead.  Senior Fedor Titov (1750) is having a monster event with 3.5 points.

Former and future North Shore resident Adarsh Jayakumar (2226, moving here shortly from Texas) is very much in the running for first with 4.5.

Perhaps the most notable Illinois high school result (so far!) is that of our fourth-graders (!!!). Alex Bian (1806) has 2.5 points, with only one loss, to an expert.  And James Wei (1804) has 3 points!  The scary thing (considering the extremely high level of competition at nationals) is that neither fourth-grader is having a particularly good tournament.

On the national front, Elizabeth Vicary's I.S. 318 team from Brooklyn is tied for the lead--these are junior high students competing against high school students!

I'm sure I missed stuff: please let me know....

One week till Anand-Topalov

Pre-match chatter:

Ronan Bennett and Daniel King in the Guardian.

The Sofia News Agency covers the Kramnik-Toiletgate angle.

Openings?  I'm expecting a lot of games in the Semi-Slav.