BOTW 2016.04.14
2016 US Chess Championship
April 13-30, 2016
With three of the World's top 10 players -- #3 Fabiano Caruana, #6 Hikaru Nakamura and #10 Wesley So, the US Championship will not only be the strongest ever, but will be the strongest national championship in the world this year. It's a 12-player RR at the wonderful St.Louis Chess Club, and features live commentary by WGM Jen Shahade, GM Yasser Seirawan & GM Maurice Ashley.
Live Games (start at 1pm Central, 2pm EST)
http://www.uschesschamps.com/2016-us-championship/live
"I wasn't surprised Karjakin won"
Is what everyone (predictably) said in their post-Candidates interviews.
You can read what top players said about the Candidates, and more, in the following recent interviews:
Sergey Karjakin
Won the Candidates with 8.5/14.
Maybe it's just me -- or maybe it's his Putin T-shirt -- but Karjakin's interviews have a whiff of 1970s era Soviet propaganda about them:
http://en.chessbase.com/post/i-am-not-afraid-of-magnus
https://chess24.com/en/read/news/karjakin-on-his-candidates-tournament-triumph
Magnus Carlsen
Deutsche Welle interview: on computers and the Candidates:
http://www.dw.com/en/world-chess-champion-magnus-carlsen-the-computer-never-has-been-an-opponent/a-19186058
Peter Svidler
Lost the World Cup knockout final to Karjakin after leading 2-0 in the final, and finished Candidates =4th-7th with 7/14.
https://chess24.com/en/read/news/svidler-you-can-only-envy-sergey-s-nervous-system
MVL
Did not play in the Candidates, but as a top 10 (now top 5) player was a very interested observer:
http://en.chessbase.com/post/hopefully-breaking-into-the-top-five-is-a-beginning
Funny Candidates Post-Mortem
Former World Champion Vishy Anand was the surprise of the Candidates, finishing =2nd-3rd with 7.5/14 and accounting for 7 of the 16 decisive games.
He and Anish Giri had a very funny post-mortem, which you can watch here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Of0o_9sOdk
Eric Hansen Grand maître 2.0
La Presse has an entertaining video video profile of GM Eric Hansen's online chess life. With IM Aman Hambleton, and GM Robin van Kempen (who gets mated with 0.01 sec left).
Caution: contains "adult" language