Did I leave anything out? Fortunately, the intended scope of the title is limited to the present week.
(1) A very strong rapid event that ended this past weekend was the Corsica Masters. First there was a qualifying open and then a series of knockout matches. Starting from the quarterfinals, here's what happened (thanks to Chess Today):
Quarterfinals:
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 2.5 - Gawain Jones 1.5
Loek van Wely 2 - Viktor Bologan 0
Teimour Radjabov 2 - Alberto David 0
Csaba Balogh 2.5 - Laurent Fressinet 1.5
Semi-Finals:
Mamedyarov 3 - van Wely 2
Radjabov 3 - Balogh 1
Finals:
Mamedyarov 2.5 - Radjabov 1.5
(2) The Spice Cup is in medias res. As its website seems reluctant to offer any standings I'd hate to divulge any secrets, but according to Chess Today it seems that after five rounds German GM Georg Meier is leading the A-group. Ray Robson and Eugene Perelshteyn, the two relatively inexperienced American GMs who most stand to benefit from this opportunity, are taking their lumps: they both have three losses and two draws (one of them in their mutual game).
I haven't followed the event closely at all, but I did notice one interesting moment.
This is Robson-Almasi from round 2, and it's Black to move. It didn't take me more than a moment or two to spot the right move, but surprisingly - almost shockingly - Almasi, with more than 20 minutes on his clock, failed to find the right move - and not once but twice! (He did go on to win the game, but not before letting Robson briefly scrape his way back to equality.) If you haven't figured it out, or want to double-check your results with mine, have a look at the game link at the end of the post.
(3) The quarterfinal matches of the US Chess League take place this week. The first two matches were on Monday (the other two take place later tonight), with New England beating New York 2.5-1.5 and Boston (hmm, I thought Boston was in New England? Never mind...) beating Baltimore by the same margin. (Next week New England will play Boston, guaranteeing that one team from that region will be in the finals. This is only slightly less ridiculous than the situation in the NYC area, which has three teams: New York, Manhattan, and New Jersey [which consists mainly of players who live just across the river and play in NYC on a regular basis]. [But maybe I'm just jealous that there's no Indiana team?]) Anyway, snide remarks about the odd geographical distribution of the league aside, some interesting games are being played, and I've picked out two from Monday's battles.
The first is Esserman - Enkhbat, which I show primarily for the picturesque final position. Black resigned here after 22.Bg8+:
It's a quick forced mate with checks, as you can easily work out for yourself. Far more interesting and complicated is this position from the other match:
This is Shankland - Lenderman, and it's White to move. White thought for a long time here but couldn't find a win (though he did go on to win the game eventually). Can you do better?
(4) Finally, the next big event starts on Friday. It's the Tal Memorial, and the lineup is a real murderer's row: Aronian (2801), Kramnik (2791), Grischuk (2771), Mamedyarov (2763), Karjakin (2760), Eljanov (2742), Gelfand (2741), Nakamura (2741), Shirov (2735), Wang Hao (2727). Very impressive!
With that we come to the end of the post, and all that's left is to send you to the replayable boards. They are here.