Tournament Roundup: Nanjing, Elista, USCL

There's been a lot of high-level tournament chess being played around the world in the last week or so - a supertournament in China, a rescheduled Grand Prix in Elista, and the finals of the US Chess League playoffs. Each of these events probably deserved their own blog entry, but I had trouble finding time to write this week, so instead, you get an all-in-one tournament roundup post!

First, the United States Chess League Championship was held last weekend, on December 6th. In an amazing repeat of the 2007 Finals, the Dallas Destiny again played the Boston Blitz, with the match again resulting in a 2-2 draw, and Dallas once again winning the USCL Championship in a tense blitz tiebreaker match! Congratulations to the Destiny, who became not only the first back-to-back champions in league history, but also the first team to win two championships at all.

Next, the Pearl Spring Chess Tournament in Nanjing, China began earlier this week. The event is a very strong, double round-robin tournament featuring six leading grandmasters: Veselin Topalov, Vassily Ivanchuk, Levon Aronian, Sergei Movsesian, Peter Svidler and local star Bu Xiangzhi. That might not be quite the level of firepower seen at Linares or Wijk aan Zee, but it's up there, making this a major event for sure. The official site is somewhat difficult to navigate, and the broken English doesn't help, but it certainly gets style points for nice presentation. After four rounds, there have been only three decisive games, with Bu Xiangzhi and Levon Aronian sharing the lead at 2.5/4.

Finally, the FIDE Grand Prix event originally scheduled to be playing in Qatar was moved to Elista, part of changes with caused several players to withdraw (in some cases, from the Grand Prix series entirely). Still, the tournament is a rather-strong 14-player round-robin; Teimour Radjabov and Peter Leko are the leading players. In round one, the biggest story was a loss by Wang Yue -- who previously had an 82-game unbeaten streak -- to Dmitry Jakovenko. Also of note - Christmas is a work day for the players, with a rest day instead scheduled for Christmas Eve.