May the Olympic Games Begin!
 Dresden Begins!
The World Chess Olympiad in Dresden is underway! This is good news and bad news for WCL Newsletter subscribers. The good news is, well, it's the Olympiad--one of the most anticipated events of the year. The bad news is, Your Kindly Editor (YKE) must head off to the airport tomorrow morning, so this edition of the Newsletter is going to have to be unusually concise!
In Round 1, the U.S. defeated Iceland 2.5-1.5 with three decisive games. American GMs Varuzhan Akobian and Alexander Onischuk both defeated their Icelandic opponents, but GM Yury Shulman fell victim to a cruel attack by GM Danielsen. The women's team, however, cruised to a 3-1 victory over Montenegro. Where is Montenegro? It's in Southeastern Europe. Don't believe me? Check the Wikipedia article. For more on Dresden, you can see the reports at Chess Life Online by Irina Krush and Michael Klein. I'm looking forward to doing some on-the-ground reporting for CLO and WCL myself while in Dresden, where I'll be attending the International Youth Camp in addition to the Olympiad.
KibBlitzing with Jean Hoffman
In case you missed it last week, we featured the non-profit organization 9 Queens, which is empowering potential chess players in Philadelphia, PA and Tucson, AZ. Jean Hoffman co-founded this organization along with Jennifer Shahade, and this week Jean is our guest on the KibBlitz! Let's hope 9 Queens gets a KibBlitz Bump!
Chess.FM Update
This Week: Watson's Chess Talk with GM Nigel Short
This week (Tue., Oct 28), returning to join John in the hot seat is former world championship challenger, GM Nigel Short MBE.
In 1979 at 19, Nigel was the world’s youngest grandmaster of the game. In 1993 in London, after defeating Boris Gelfand, Jon Speelman, Jan Timman and Anatoly Karpov in Candidates Matches, Short unsuccessfully challenged Garry Kasparov for the World Championship title. Along with his playing activities, Short is regarded as a witty, yet often controversial columnist on the game, notably for two of the UK’s leading broadsheets, The Sunday Telegraph and The Guardian.
Nigel has gone on to coach young prodigies like Pentala Harikrishna, Sergey Karjakin, David Howell and Parimarjan Negi. In 1999 the Queen of Gt. Britain awarded him the honor of Member of the British Empire (MBE), in recognition of his chess accomplishments. Nigel also recently won the Commonwealth Championship for the third time. So listen now!
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