The British Knockout Championship is running concurrently with the London Chess Classic. The eight-man field has been whittled down to four. In the quarter-finals, Nigel Short beat IM Alan Merry 2-0 (aside from Merry, all the other players are GMs), Matthew Sadler beat Jonathan Rowson 1.5-.5, David Howell beat Jonathan Hawkins 1.5-.5, and Luke McShane also won with a 1.5-.5 score over Gawain Jones. (It took a whopping 125 moves to win the decisive game, but he did it.)
The first game of the semi-finals took place on Saturday, during the LCC's first rest day. Both Short-McShane and Sadler-Howell started with a draw.
The Russian Championship starts today - Sunday - with a relatively weak field. (By Russian standards, that is. It's a monster field for a normal national championship.) No Kramnik, Grischuk, Karjakin, or Nepomniachtchi. But there are still a few 2700s playing: Peter Svidler, Maxim Matlakov, Nikita Vitiugov, Vladimir Fedoseev, Evgeny Tomashevsky, and near- and former 2700s Ernesto Inarkiev, Vladimir Malakhov, and Daniil Dubov. Not a bad top eight in a 12-player field. (A link for non-Russian speakers: TWIC's page.)
Finally, a TCEC update: after 72 games, Houdini leads 11-5 (with 56 draws), but Komodo looks ready to gain its 6th win in game 73.