The Leader of the Pack

The fortunes of America's top chess players in this year's championship tournament are chronicled in the current issue of Chess Life magazine, and top billing goes to Barrington, Ill.-based GM Yury Shuman, who led the pack and brought the championship home to the Prairie State.

Yury, a member of the Chicago Blaze, had finished a close second at the championship meet two years ago. This year he arrived at the event in Tulsa knowing he had a good chance to win. He also knew he'd have to outplay reigning champion Alex Shabalov as well as former champs GMs Boris Gulko and Alexander Onischuk and other hungry competitors, like GM Sergey Kudrin, GM Varuzhan Akobian, IM Josh Friedel (who earned his final grandmaster norm in Tulsa), and Blaze teammate GM Dmitry Gurevich.

Here are two of Yury's most exciting games from the eight-round event. Check out the tripled-pawn situation he overcame in the endgame against IM David Preuss. And see why Chess Life Online used the word "carnage" to characterize Yury's seventh-round confrontation with GM Julio Becerra-Rivero.

[Cross-posted from Chicago Blaze Blog]

Shulman is U.S. Champion!

The new United States Chess Champion is Chicago-area Grandmaster Yury Shulman, a member of the new Chicago Blaze chess team. Details at USCF. Anna Zatonskih won the women's title (her second time, I think) beating incumbent Irina Krush and others in a tough tournament.

In other news, Chicago chess will be "blazing" this summer, according to USCF. Next on tap: the Chicago Open, where Ray School Chess Club members Sonam Ford and Phillip Parker-Turner will be playing this weekend. (Note to Hyde Parkers: members of the University of Chicago Chess Team will be there, too.)

More as I have the time.

Congratulations to Yury and everyone else.

Illinois’s Shulman Leads in U.S. Championship

Chicago-area grandmaster Yury Shulman, a member of the Chicago Blaze, has taken the lead in the U.S. Chess Championship currently underway in Oklahoma. More coverage as I can get to it, but in the meantime follow the action at the official site and at the U.S. Chess Federation. Let’s all root for Yury.

Update (5/20): Yury is ahead by a point going into the 8th (and final?) round, and reigning women's champ Irina Krush is also in the lead in her quest to defend her title.

More Top Players Join Blaze

The Chicago Blaze got good news last week when two more of Illinois’ top players agreed to join the team. Grandmaster Yury Shulman and International Master Jan Van De Mortel will be members of the Blaze when it represents the Windy City in the U.S. Chess League next season.

Yury and Jan are both well known in Chicago-area chess circles. Yury, who came that close to winning the U.S. Championship in 2006, runs his chess school out of Barrington, and Jan is a mainstay of Chess Education Partners. He also lives in Hyde Park and teaches chess at the Neighborhood Club.

The guys will join the previously announced players, which include GM Dmitry Gurevitch, IM Angelo Young, FM Mehmed Pasalic, and experts Adam Strunk and Ilan Meerovich. These new roster additions boost the Blaze’s chances of being a top contender in the league from day one. More here from team manager Glenn Panner, who has the enviable task of juggling all this local fire power.

Get it? Fire power? Blaze? Go ahead and groan if you like, but get use to it. You’ll be hearing a lot more bad puns when the team sets the town on fire. (Oops.)

Wanna Play Karpov?

Looks like big doings next January 11 out in Barrington, home base of local GM Yury Shulman. Former World Champion Anatoly Karpov will be there, along with some other superstars, and someone, at least, is playing a simul to which the public is invited to enroll. I saw this on Susan Polgar's blog:


It's not entirely clear to me who's playing whom, but you can see a bigger copy of the flyer here, and there's more information at Yury's Web site.

Shulman to Play for World Cup

Congratulations to local Grandmaster Yury Shulman, who gets a nice write-up in today's Daily Herald:

Chess grandmaster to vie for World Cup

By Chad Brooks, cbrooks@dailyherald.com, Posted
Friday, July 13, 2007

Chess Grandmaster Yury Shulman of Barrington is hoping to add another title
to his laundry list of accomplishments: world champion.

For the third time, Schulman has qualified for the World Chess Federation’s
World Cup, to be held Nov. 23 to Dec. 16 in Russia. . . .

Read the rest of the story here.