Friday, April 11

Loose Ends From the Tulsa Qualifier

The US Championship Qualifier in Tulsa was finally USCF rated. NM Sam Shankland is up to 2332 and he should receive the FIDE Master title after the next FIDE rating list comes out in July. Kudos to Sam on qualifying and taking a giant leap forward! Reigning World U12 Champion FM Danya Naroditsky also gained a significant number of rating points and now sits at 2320. Even your humble reporter saw his rating increase, back up to 2276.

In other news, the organizing committee for the 2008 Frank K. Berry US Championship announced three wild cards for the tournament on May 13-21 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Congrats to IM Josh Friedel (Northern California) along with FM Michael Langer (Texas) and expert Sergey Galant (Oklahoma) for this honor. Good luck to all of our CalChess representatives in Oklahoma: IM Friedel, IM David Pruess and NM Shankland (some of you may also include former Bay Area resident GM Alex Yermolinsky).

Spokesman Tom Braunlich published the nearly complete list of players in his latest story on Chess Life Online. The top seeds are defending champion GM Alexander Shabalov and highest rated GM Alexander Onischuk. Other exciting participants in the field of 24 include: GM Gregory Kaidanov, GM Jaan Ehlvest, GM Varuzhan Akobian, GM Yury Shulman, GM Julio Becerra, GM Eugene Perelshteyn, GM Jesse Kraai and IM Ben Finegold.

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