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This year's SCOOP series has produced numerous spectacular performances with many players collecting multiple cashes and making numerous deep runs. Event #27-H, the $2,100 buy-in fixed-limit Triple Draw 2-7 event, continued that trend, with several familiar usernames and avatars again turning up at tourney's end. This time it was Stephen "stevie444" Chidwick breaking through to earn his first SCOOP watch by topping a tough field to earn the $52,320 first prize. There were only about 20 players in their seats when the first hands were dealt on Tuesday afternoon, but by the time the two hours of late registration concluded a total of 96 players signed up. That added up to a $192,000 prize pool, nearly double the tourney's $100K guarantee, with only the top dozen finishers making the cash. By the five-hour mark the field had been whittled down to 32 players, with Team PokerStars Pro Jonathan Duhamel having just been sent railward in 33rd while GlassOfBeer, Femmeonfelt, and blanconegro occupied the top three spots on the leaderboard. A couple of Duhamel's teammates soon followed him to the exit in Eugene Katchalov (out in 30th) and Alex Kravchenko (in 28th), leaving just George Danzer with below average chips to sport the red spade as the tourney played down to five tables. It would take a couple more hours plus 15 minutes more to play down to 12 and the money, with Danzer continuing to nurse a short stack just about the entire way while Bryan "Brryann" Ruiter pushed to the top of the counts by building a stack of more than 80,000. Soon Danzer's run would come to an end in 12th place after losing the last of his chips in a hand versus Unkn0wn123. That equaled a $4,800 cash for Danzer as he came up short in an attempt to earn a second lowball title in this year's series after having won Event #12-H ($2,100 NL 2-7 Draw). GlassOfBeer (11th) and Mike "SirWatts" Watson (10th) followed Danzer to the rail, both also earning $4,800 for their finishes. Then by the nine-hour break Brian "$tinger 88" Hastings (9th), enrico.ita77 (8th), and Phil "Jackal69" Shaw (7th) were eliminated, each taking away $7,200 for their efforts. Just six remained, with Bryan "Brryann" Ruiter still leading the way, having moved up over the 160,000-chip mark. Seat 1: Rory "Mafews" Mathews (United Kingdom) -- 37,760 Seat 2: Unkn0wn123 (Uruguay) -- 29,606 Seat 3: Stephen "stevie444" Chidwick (United Kingdom) -- 125,205 Seat 4: Calvin "cal42688" Anderson (Mexico) -- 29,760 Seat 5: Bryan "Brryann" Ruiter (Netherlands) -- 167,636 Seat 6: 7Be/\eC7 (Belarus) -- 90,033 During the break the chip leader offered some advice to the rest of the table, with his nearest challenger, Stephen "stevie444" Chidwick, asking for further insight. Brryann: Ace is high guys stevie444: so nuts is 23456? Brryann: damn right stevie444: gotcha Final table funnies aside, these six represented a formidable bunch, all tourney regulars with numerous significant scores under their belts, and all clearly well aware of the rules for fixed-limit 2-7 triple draw. Mafews meets end in sixth One of those tough competitors was Rory "Mafews" Mathews who already had 10 cashes in this year's SCOOP before the start of this event, including one other final table in Event #14-H ($1,050 NLHE Big Antes) where he finished ninth. Mathews had a rocky start to this final table, however, and was down to 8,360 with the stakes at 1,400/2,800 when Calvin "cal42688" Anderson opened by raising from UTG. Mathews three-bet from the button, and when it folded back to Anderson he capped it and Mathews called. Both drew a single card on the first round and checked, then both drew one card again. This time when cal42688 checked, Mafews bet all in for 2,760, and Anderson called. cal42688 took one card one more time on the last draw while Mafews stood pat. Mafews turned over a 9-7 with [9][7][5][4][2], but Anderson had drawn better as he showed an 8-7 -- [8][7][6][4][3] -- and Mathews was out in

White to move. How should white proceed?Source: ChessToday.netChess Daily News from Susan Polgar

The 4th Danzhou Grand Master Chess Tournament takes place in Danzhou, Hainan, from 20 May to 29 May 2013. Ten Chinese Grandmasters compete in the round robin tournament.Wang Hao, Wang Yue and Li Chao b are not present, but Ding Liren, the 2011 winner Yu Yangyi, the 2010 and 2012 winner Bu Xiangzhi are fighting for the top prize of 80,000.Participants:GM Ding Liren CHN 2707 GM Yu Yangyi CHN 2675 GM Bu Xiangzhi CHN 2662GM Ni Hua CHN 2646 GM Wen Yang CHN 2618 GM Zhou Jianchao CHN 2607GM Zhou Weiqi CHN 2590 GM Lu Shanglei CHN 2551 GM Xiu Deshun CHN 2534GM Wei Yi CHN 2530Live gamesMore informationChess Daily News from Susan Polgar

Check or bet. Call or fold. Break or pat. These are the relatively bifurcated decisions that are presented to fixed-limit poker players. That's what 376 players signed up for in SCOOP 2013 Event 27-M, $215 FL Triple Draw 2-7. Grinders one and all, aDrENalin710 proved the ultimate grinder by entering the final table as the short stack and going on to win the whole tournament. 48 players made the money in Event 27-M. None of them were Team PokerStars Pros or PokerStars Team Online players, although the ITM players did include some other notable faces. BrynKenney checked out at 43rd place; Ami "UhhMee" Barer put in yet another good SCOOP performance with a 26th-place finish; and James Obst did a bit better than Barer by coming in 23rd. Stephen "stevie444" Chidwick outshone them all. Chidwick faced a tough decision to break or pat on the bubble of the final table against Ig123456789, who patted the last draw. After dipping into his time bank for about 90 seconds, Chidwick opted to break his hand and draw one. It was the correct move against Ig123456789's 8-7-6-4-2, but Chidwick paired on the draw to be bounced in 7th place. Don't cry too much for stevie444; he was busy on the final table of Event 27-H (where he was still alive with three players remaining at the time of publishing this post) while the other six players collapsed to the Event 27-M final table. Seat 1: Ig123456789 (361414 in chips) Seat 2: Zackary "Thrash370" Koerper (384556 in chips) Seat 3: aDrENalin710 (77372 in chips) Seat 4: CandyJohnson (541250 in chips) Seat 5: Tamsusis (94248 in chips) Seat 6: kingkai (421160 in chips) Level 25: stakes 7k-14k Average: 313,333 (22.5 big bets) The final table started with an odd distribution of chips. Four players had stacks that were above the table average, while two players - Tamsusis and aDrENalin710 - were quite short. Things only got worse for the short stacks as, four minutes into the final table, the stakes rolled up to 8k-16k. CandyJohnson started as chip leader but soon relinquished that title to Ig123456789, a Ukrainian player who won a PL 5-Card Draw event during WCOOP 2010. With four streets of fixed-limit betting, the final table promised plenty of stomach-churning swings. Both short stacks proved that with numerous double-ups in the early stages of the final table. aDrENalin710, in fact, rose all the way up to the table average, mainly at Koerper's expense. The chips kept working their way around the table, never staying long in any one player's stack. Koerper was crippled in a hand against Tamsusis that Koerper had three-bet pre-draw. Koerper drew one to Tamsusis' two on the first draw and bet, then one to Tamsusis' two on the second draw as well. Tamsusis raised Koerper's bet on that street; Koerper called, drew one on the third draw ahead of Tamsusis' pat, then check-folded, preserving a stack of only 10k. Koerper doubled once to get back up to 25k, then doubled a second time with a 9 against Ig123456789's queen to climb up to 45k. That's where it ended. The third time Koerper's tried to double up aDrENalin710 made an inspired pat on the third draw after Koerper himself patted what turned out to be a 9-8. aDrENalin710 dragged the pot with a 9-7 and sent Koerper to the rail in 6th place. For the most part, Ig123456789, aDrENalin710 and CandyJohnson were the beneficiaries of the chip movement; kingkai and Tamsusis were victimized by it. kingkai caught a bad piece of luck against aDrENalin710 to hit the rail in 5th place: The other short stack, Tamsusis, wasn't far behind kingkai in reporting to the rail. aDrENalin710 did the honors once again. The pot was three-bet by Tamsusis pre-draw and called by both Ig123456789 (who opened with a raise) and aDrENalin710. On the first draw, Tamsusis drew 2, Ig123456789 drew 1, and aDrENalin710 drew 2. Ig123456789 led with a bet that both other plaeyrs called. The action was the same after the second draw, at which point Tamsusis was all in. Tamsusis pa

Beer-Sheba chess club-40 / Yochanan Afek Beersheba or the “Capital of the Negev desert” of southern Israel as it often referred to, it is the seventh-largest city in Israel with a population of approximately 200,000. The municipal chess club of the city, the country’s largest one, is celebrating four decades of highly successful local and International activity. The highlight of these festivities will be a strong rapid round-robin tournament starting next Sunday with the participation of eight local grandmasters and four European guest GMs to compete for a prize-fund of 20.000US $. Here is the list of participants: 1. Evgeny Alekseev 2700 (Russia) 2. Viktor Laznicka 2679 (Czech Republic) 3. Sergei Fedorchuk 2660 (Ukraine) 4. Daniel Fridmann 2648 (Germany) 5. Maxim Rodshtein 2663 6. Evgeny Postny 2637 7. Michael Roiz 2617 8. Tamir Nabaty 2579 9. Boris Avrukh 2576 10. Alexander Huzman 2572 11. Alon Greenfeld 2538 12. Ilya Khmelniker 2494 Tournament director is IA Eliahu Levant Games will be played from Sunday 26/05 through 29/05 starting daily at 16.00 (15.00 European time), 3 rounds a day and 2 rounds on the closing day. Time control: 25 minutes + 10 seconds increment per move. Organizers promise to transmit the games live on the Israeli federation website: www.chess.org.il The Beer Sheba chess club was founded by Eliahu Levant, a reputed trainer and arbiter already in his native city of St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), right after his immigration to Israel in 1973. Within just a couple of years the club and its chess school turned under Levant’s most energetic leadership to be the most dominant factor in the Israeli chess scene and by now it can boast more than 20 national team championships, numerous youth and adults national titles and an impressive list of International events hosted by the city over the years with the participation of numerous world class players highlighted by the finals of the world team championship in 2005. The city arguably holds a world record of number of grandmasters per capita (1:20,000). Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar

A crossword is a word puzzle that normally takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white and shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. Today's Theme "Who Speaks Spanish?"Play Here

Solving equations may look like a piece of cake to the math masters, but is it still easy when you need to spot the needle in the haystack? Come and check if you are observant enough in this interesting puzzle game with a mathematical twist! Your goal is to solve the given equations one by one, then locate the answers in a grid which contains numerous numbers. Play Here

Official website: http://thessaloniki2013.fide.comFull pairings here: http://thessaloniki2013.fide.com/en/component/turnuva/?task=fileview&kid=1Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar

Dwan has already rattled off over 20,000 hands in the high-stakes games in May and is still going strong.  The aggressive pro went into full beast mode this weekend and picked up $793,616, according to highstakesdb.com. Formerly known as a No-Limit specialist, Dwan has been particularly effective in the big FLO8 games that have been running and most of his profit this weekend came exclusively from the format. Although Dwan came down to earth a bit yesterday, losing close to $500k, he’s still showing a massive profit of over $600k on the year. Fans Still Waiting for Big Dwan vs. Cates Showdown Dan Cates is ready.   Interestingly Dwan has also put together a few victories against archrival Dan “jungleman12” Cates in the durrrr Challenge this year, albeit small ones. This weekend Dwan and Cates recommenced the challenge for a short session. Dwan only won about $30k but he’s actually won every match since they re-started the challenge in 2013. Railbirds have been desperate for a huge durrrr Challenge session and while that hasn’t transpired yet this year Dwan has steadily grinded $270,000 from Cates, which is significant considering he was facing a $1.5 million deficit at the start of the year. A massive session could be imminent considering Dwan is feeling some confidence from other big wins and jungleman12 has been chomping at the bit for some action.Visit www.pokerlistings.com

FIDE is pleased to announce the fourth stage of the FIDE Grand Prix Series will be held in Thessaloniki (Greece) between the 21st of May and 4th of June 2013. The 5-star Makedonia Palace Hotel and its owner, international business investor and philanthropist Ivan Savvidi, are FIDE's sponsors for the 12-player Grand Prix Chess Tournament. "This event could happen thanks to the active support of the well known philanthropist Ivan Savvidi. According to the wish of Mr Savvidi, an elite chess event is coming to Greece. As FIDE has its principal secretariat in Athens, we are quite happy to have such an elite event in Greece. Additionally, the Greek Chess Federation is one of the most experienced and organized chess Federations in the world and their involvement in the organization of the event will be critical to its success," said FIDE President Kirsan Iljumzhinov. The opening ceremony will take place at the Makedonia Palace Hotel at Thessaloniki at 6.30 p.m. on 21st of May. The games start at 14:00h local time except the last round. The prize fund to be shared by the players in Thessaloniki is 170,000 EUR, while the organizer provides further 70,000 EUR to the accumulated prize fund for the overal Grand Prix series standings. Participants include three former World Champions Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria), Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Uzbekistan). GM Teimur Radjabov has withdrawn from the Thessaloniki Grand Prix for personal reasons and has been replaced by GM Etienne Bacrot from France. There will be a systematic renewal of images, reports, as well as live commenting (English, Greek) and press-conferences with the players. Official commentators are GM Ioannis Papaioannou and GM Stelios Halkias. Time control: 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves and then each player will be allotted 15 minutes after the second time control and an increment of 30 seconds per move will be allowed from move 61 onwards. The Grand Prix Series consists of six tournaments to be held over two years (2012-2013). 18 top players participate in 4 of these 6 tournaments. The winner and second placed player overall of the Grand Prix Series will qualify for the Candidates Tournament to be held in March 2014.PlayersName FED Title Rating Bacrot, Etienne FRA GM 2725Caruana, Fabiano ITA GM 2774Dominguez Perez, Leinier CUB GM 2723Grischuk, Alexander RUS GM 2779Ivanchuk, Vassily UKR GM 2755Kamsky, Gata USA GM 2741Kasimdzhanov, Rustam UZB GM 2699Morozevich, Alexander RUS GM 2760Nakamura, Hikaru USA GM 2775Ponomariov, Ruslan UKR GM 2742Svidler, Peter RUS GM 2769Topalov, Veselin BUL GM 2793 Average: 2753Official webpage thessaloniki2013.fide.com Pictures of players: http://thessaloniki2013.fide.com/images/stories/gallery/Players%20Thessaloniki/index.html Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar