Weekly Recap: So Wins a Fourth U.S. Title and Bayegan Pendik Take the Club Cup

Two title races, one individual and one team, ran side by side this week: the U.S. Championship and the European Club Cup in Budva both finished with late drama. Around them came a record-setting IM norm, a new rating proposal, and a batch of November calendar previews.

U.S. Championship

Wesley So beat Andy Woodward in a pawn ending in round eight. That put him on 6/8, a point clear of Fabiano Caruana, and he was the only unbeaten player in the Open section.

In round nine he held Caruana to a draw and kept the full-point lead. Then he drew Hans Niemann in under an hour in round ten, still a point ahead of Caruana and Grigoriy Oparin with one round left.

The last round went wrong for So. Sam Sevian outplayed him in a heavy-piece endgame, Caruana beat Awonder Liang, and the two were level. Rachael Li, 16, took the Women’s title.

So then won the rapid playoff 1.5-0.5. It is his fourth national title, and it pays $56,000.

European Club Cup

Round two brought a scare for the top seeds. Murzin’s swindle kept Bayegan Pendik clear after a top-board loss, while Wei Yi, Arjun Erigaisi and Richard Rapport reached 2/2.

After round three, eleven teams were perfect on 6/6. Tenth seeds Beer Sheva were the only team from the top twelve seeds to drop a point.

Round four hit the star names. Abdusattorov, Giri and Erdogmus all lost, to Aydin Suleymanli, Pranav Venkatesh and Karthikeyan Murali respectively.

By round five only two teams were still on 10/10, and Novy Bor and SuperChess Romania were paired against each other. They drew 3-3, and Bayegan Pendik caught them with a 3½-2½ win, leaving three teams tied on 11 points.

In the final round, Bayegan Pendik beat SuperChess Romania 3.5-2.5 to win the Cup. Giri, who had lost in round four, scored a crushing win over Abdusattorov.

Also in Budva, FM Bodhana Sivanandan completed her IM requirements at 11 years, seven months and 16 days. That makes her the youngest girl ever to do so, ahead of Polgar’s 1988 mark.

World Championship and big events

The Gukesh Dommaraju and Javokhir Sindarov match runs 24 November to 12 December at the Fondation Martin Bodmer in Cologny, near Geneva. Our piece on Sindarov’s seconds covers his camp for the 14 games.

Magnus Carlsen will headline the MOVE Cup, an eight-player rapid event in Barcelona on January 19-20, 2027. The prize fund is €300,000, at 10 minutes plus a one-second increment.

Ratings, interviews and other results

Total Chess proposed a unified rating that folds classical, rapid and blitz FIDE ratings into one number. In its first ranking, Carlsen sits at 2830, 51 points clear, across 100 players using 1 October FIDE ratings.

In a ChessBase interview, Latvian GM Arturs Neiksans talks about quitting chess, coaching Levy and moving on. He covers his childhood in Valka, a long break from the game, and a return that ended with the title.

In Kazakhstan, Armenian GM Emin Ohanyan won the Atyrau Masters on tiebreak. He and 15-year-old IM Jiang Haochen both finished on 7/9, and Ohanyan’s Buchholz cut-1 was 46 to Jiang’s 36½.

November calendars

South America has 84 tournaments tracked for November, 51 rapid and 33 classical, and the month opens with 158 players in Bogotá.

Africa has five events, three classical and two rapid, across South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria and Tunisia. The biggest field so far is 94 players at the West Rand Closed in Krugersdorp on November 28.

Oceania has twenty tournaments, all in Australia, eleven classical and nine rapid. The list includes eight-day club events and a Geelong Open.