Official Home Page of the USCF 2008 WCL Grand Prix

World Chess Live (WCL) is pleased to sponsor USCF's 2008 Grand Prix and 2008 Junior Grand Prix. We're providing prize funds of $20,000 and $7,500 (in cash, merchandise, and memberships), and will also be running Online Grand Prize Satellite events throughout the year.

For the latest raw data in the Grand Prix race, check the Live Standings page, updated regularly by the United States Chess Federation.

2008 Final Results Released!

Places 11-15 receive merchandise prizes of $200, $200, $200, $150, and $150 respectively. In addition, the Top 40 non-titled players will receive a free 1-year WCL membership worth $50. (FIDE-titled players are always free on WCL.)

February Chess Life Junior Standings

February Chess Life Senior Standings

Final Junior Grand Prix Results Released!

We recently received from the USCF the Final Junior Grand Prix Results for 2008. Below is the chart they provided us, complete with ten cash prize winners! Those who placed 1st-10th will receive 2-year WCL junior memberships and 2-year USCF Young Adult memberships. All those who placed 11th-22nd will receive a 1-year USCF Young Adult Membership and a 1-year World Chess Live junior membership.

Below is a list of state winners. Each state winner will receive a 1-year WCL junior membership and a 1-year USCF Young adult membership, as well as a $20 WCL store gift certificate.

Spotlight On... GM Alexander Shabalov!

In 1991, American long-jumper Mike Powell leapt an incredible distance of 29 feet and 4.4 inches at the World Championship in Athletics, held in Tokyo, Japan. Seventeen years later, in 2008, GM Alexander Shabalov leapt from tenth place in the World Chess Live Grand Prix to fifth place in a single month. And keeping in that same leap-frog spirit, Shabalov did it in a single tournament—the 17th Annual King’s Island Open in Cincinnati, Ohio! This 120 Grand Prix Point tournament ended in a three-way tie, giving Shabalov the points he needed to continue his Grand Prix rampage.

Shabalov has earned his Grand Prix points from scoring big wins in big-ticket item tournaments. Amazingly, all of his 159.913 points came from just four events! He received major prize money early in the year at the Eastern Class Championships (100 GPP) and kept rolling ahead with Foxwoods (200 GPP). He didn’t score again, however, until he shared first at the U.S. Open in Dallas, Texas this August. His King’s Island win catapulted him ahead of a GM-packed Grand Prix field to put him back in the limelight.

Other major jumpers include the current front-runner, GM Sergey Kudrin—who let loose and tore through the scoreboard, going from 204.548 to 251.215—and GM Jaan Ehlvest, who moved from a disappointing 11th place last month to a respectable 7th this time around. As these chess athletes prepare for their final sprint to the finish line, the question is: Who will leap the farthest? You can follow the action on the Live Standings Page. For more on Shabalov’s win at the King’s Island Open, see Tim Moroney’s article in the November Chess Life Online archives. ~Jonathan Hilton

January Chess Life Overall Standings

January Chess Life Junior Standings

January Chess Life Senior Standings

WCL Newsletter: "Good-bye, Grand Prix '08"

The World Chess Live 2008 Grand Prix closes in:

Spotlight On... IM Alex Lenderman!

This month, Grand Prix hopeful IM Alex Lenderman locked in crucial point gains in three tournaments, bringing his total tournament count to an astonishing 21 successful World Chess Live Grand Prix events. He now moves into fourth place, behind the GM front-runners—Sergey Kudrin and Alexander Ivanov—as well as the Grand Prix “sleeper”, GM Julio Becerra. Lenderman’s score of 173.267 GPP sends a clear signal to the other Grand Prix contenders. By amassing points from smaller tournaments, the former “dark horse” of the Grand Prix race has made clear his potential. Perhaps we’ll see a spectacular upset in this race before the competition draws to a close.

IM Lenderman still has slightly more than 30 points’ worth of ground to cover before he can make Grand Prix history. Last year, only four IM’s finished in the top twelve spots. Of those, the highest finisher was this year’s U.S. Open Champion—IM Enrico Sevillano. Sevillano won fourth place in the 2007 Grand Prix behind GM’s Jaan Ehlvest, Zviad Izoria, and Alexander Stripunsky. I think Lenderman may well be up for the task of surpassing the current leaders, as he’s made having a strong GP showing one of his chess priorities this year. Earlier in the season, he’d remarked that he would be happy with a finish in the top eight; knowing Lenderman, I suspect he’s revised that goal to reflect an optimistic “the sky is the limit” attitude.

What’s your take on the current Grand Prix standings? I’d like to encourage readers to write their own opinions in to the World Chess Live Newsletter. The best “Letters to the Editor” may be published in the weekly WCL Newsletter, so let your Grand Prix predictions be known! ~Jonathan Hilton

Relevant WCL Newsletter links:

Grand Prix Age Categories: Who's Winning?
KibBlitzing with IM Alex Lenderman

December Chess Life Overall Standings

December Chess Life Junior Standings

Senior Categories: Standings

For up-to-the-minute Grand Prix listings, see the Live Standings page on the United States Chess Federation website.

December Chess Life for Kids Junior Grand Prix

To see the latest World Chess Live Junior Grand Prix standings, visit the USCF's JGP Live Standings page. To look up the the JGP records for an individual player, enter his or her USCF ID in the Points Earned Details search box.

Spotlight On... Jack Hutton!

Jack Hutton, whose name stands at the top of the World Chess Live Junior Grand Prix list this month, knows the power of setting goals for oneself. During the early days of summer, Jack learned about the Junior Grand Prix and saw that he’d already wracked up a handful of points from two previous tournaments. He pictured himself as the Junior Grand Prix leader, and got to work finding “Expert” level opponents that could provide him with an opportunity to earn more points. First, he won an astonishing 35 points at the World Open in Philadelphia. Then, he used online Grand Prix qualifiers on the World Chess Live online server to better his score by another 35 points. In total, Jack has won 135 points for 7 wins and 13 draws over higher-rated opponents.

“Chess has taught me how to look at problems, something which helps me succeed in school,” says Jack, who is now a senior at Bronxville High School in New York. “It also challenges me to learn more about myself.” His advice to younger students? “Just keep playing, win or lose, because you will get better.” More than just a chess player, Jack is also an athlete who participates in cross country running. World Chess Live congratulations Jack Hutton for achieving his goals in chess, school, and sports!

For more on Jack Hutton, check out the quick interview KibBlitzing with Jack Hutton from the WCL Newsletter.

Spotlight On... GM Julio Becerra!

As long as I’ve been writing these blurbs, Julio Becerra has always been ranked somewhere around the middle of the pack. It was as if the Grand Prix were a giant game of Candy Land and Becerra was stuck in the Molasses Swamp. Yet Becerra has proved to be the great sleeper of the Grand Prix Top 10 this year. Although last month he was ranked behind GMs Ivanov, Kudrin, Erenburg, and Paragua, the Floridian fighter has seen the end of a long layover in the doldrums. He’s emerged to take a whopping ten-and-a-half point lead!

Why has Becerra been a sleeper so long? The answer is because, although he has consistently been ranked in the Top 10, one could count his tournament victories on a single hand. Becerra’s apparent “inactivity” on the Grand Prix list put him safely under the radar. Back in March, Becerra won more Grand Prix points than there are feathers on a turkey by taking the cake at Foxwoods; he then won a cornucopia of points at a qualifier for the U.S. Championship later that month. But after that, he dropped out of Grand Prix action almost completely.

To date, Becerra still has only won Grand Prix points in five tournaments! For comparison, Ivanov, now #2 on the Grand Prix list, has won points in nine events spread throughout the course of the year. New Yorker IM Alex Lenderman, who surged from #9 to #6 this month, has won points in a whopping eighteen events.

But now, fresh with points from the 16th Annual Southern Open (GPP: 100) and the 2008 Florida State Championship (GPP: 40), Becerra is back in business. Will he slide quietly back into the middle of the pack, preferring to remain a sleeper until staging a dramatic comeback at the end? Or will he fight to defend his #1 spot, even if it means expending energy by winning smaller Grand Prix events? Perhaps by next month we’ll have some answers—but, in the meantime, be sure to check for live updates on the Grand Prix Live Standings page as GMs Ivanov and Kudrin make their plays to push Becerra out of the top spot. ~Jonathan Hilton

Relevant WCL Newsletter Links:

Julio Becerra: Now Leading the Grand Prix

Spotlight On... GM Alexander Ivanov!

If every World Chess Live Grand Prix point Alexander Ivanov has won since last month’s standings were equal to 844.0917 miles, he’d have gained enough Grand Prix miles to travel once around the circumference of Earth. Yet Sergey Kudrin is putting some strong strokes behind him to regain his lead, as he is only trailing by 1.133 points. If only chess had some equivalent of the Olympic swimmers’ Speedo swimsuits, something that could just give one GM or the other the slightest edge!

The race between Ivanov and Kudrin rippled slightly when the two GP super-contenders faced off on August 10 at the 13th Annual Bradley Open in Connecticut—Kudrin’s USCF-listed home state. They drew, leaving Ivanov a solid half-point ahead. But in the slow-mo video replay (aka wall chart), you can see that the two tied for first with two others, splitting the GP points and leaving their total tallies neck-and-neck.

Meanwhile, Sergey Erenburg has continued gaining on the leaders and has now moved from a distant seventh in the rankings to an up-close-and-personal third. The UMBC student had launched himself furiously from the GP starting block at the start of the summer, but has indicated he may ease off his Michael Phelpsian pace as the new school year hits with full force. But will he make it to the #1 spot before then? Be sure to check for live standings updates. ~Jonathan Hilton

Heung Leads Junior Grand Prix

Christopher Heung recently made a breakthrough in the Junior Grand Prix race to capture the top spot. See WCL Newsletter Vol. 2, Issue 37.

Erenburg Speaks

Audio Erenburg!

Grandmaster Sergey Erenburg talks about his plans for the future in this audio clip.

Relevant WCL Newsletter Links:
Audio Erenburg!

Spotlight On... GM Sergey Erenburg!

July’s World Chess Live Grand Prix activity saw a valiant struggle by GMs Paragua, Kudrin, and Ivanov to hold their top three spots on the chart. Each came close to adding 40 GP points to his score in the past month alone! The Grand Prix hangs in the balance as the “Big Three” duke it out in the point count.

The talk of this month, however, is GM Sergey Erenburg. Last June, he was nowhere to be seen on the Grand Prix charts. But in just a mere four weeks, he has crashed through the field to take the #7 slot!

An Israeli chess competitor in his mid-twenties, Erenburg has quickly proved himself an effective tournament winner. Since June, Erenburg has triumphed in both a major Open tournament—Bill Goichberg’s “Cleveland Open”—and a strong Round Robin, the New Jersey Futurity. In fact, Erenburg’s picture seems to be popping up on Chess Life Online with remarkable frequency!

Will Erenburg’s streak continue as he rockets past the 100-point mark? Time will tell, but we’ll be keeping a pair of sunglasses handy to watch him as he lights up the tournament sky. In the meantime, be sure to check the Grand Prix standings as new results roll in. ~Jonathan Hilton