It’s the middle of August and a good time for a vacation, so we’ll let the players do the heavy lifting today. Fortunately, the dog days of summer are a boom time for chess, and we have a ton of fine games to fill some column inches from the recent World Chess Olympiad in Chennai, India and, closer to home, the 122nd U.S. Open in Rancho Mirage, California.
The young team from Uzbekistan exploited the absence of China and Russia and the missteps of the favored Indian and U.S. squads to take home an unexpected but well-deserved gold medal in Chennai, with Armenia taking the silver and the India 2 team the bronze.