Azerbaijan Snatch Gold

In one of the closest team races of recent years, the young Azerbaijan team are celebrating their first international team title as they narrowly edged out defending champions and leaders Russia in the final round of the European Team Championship in Novi Sad, Serbia.

Russia, who had a shaky start, finished strongly and looked set for gold. In the penultimate round, they beat two-time Olympiad champions Armenia for a slender lead at the top on tiebreak from early pace-setters Azerbaijan going into the final round.

Both were tied on 13/16 match-points, but Russia led by just one individual game-point - so it was all going to be decided on whomever scored the biggest score in the final round. And indeed in a dramatic final round of twists and turns, Russia could only draw with Spain while Azerbaijan narrowly beat the Netherlands (due to Daniel Stellwagon somehow managing to lose a drawn rook ending to Vugar Gashimov) to take first place outright on 15-points. Silver went to Russia on 14-points; the bronze going to Ukraine on tie-break after they finished on tied with Armenia on 13-points.

So, congratulations to the jubilant young Azeri gold medal-winning team (pictured above) of GM Teimour Radjabov, GM Vugar Gashimov, GM Gadir Guseinov, GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and GM Rauf Mamedov.

COMING SOON...

Next week sees the start of an amazing trio of super-tournaments that will have extended live coverage here on Chess.FM. The Tal Memorial start next week in Moscow, followed in December by the London Chess Classic, and in January Corus Wijk aan Zee. Just sign-up today for ICC and you can sit back and watch all the action from these three super-strong elite events with expert move-by-move commentary from the Chess.FM grandmaster team of Joel Benjamin, Larry Christiansen. Nick De Firmian, Gregory Kaidanov and Ronen Har-Zvi.

New Jersey Knockouts Clinch East Title

There's only one more week left of the regular USCL season - but already the New Jersey Knockouts have clinched the East Division title after beating the Philadelphia Inventors in Week 9.

Joining New Jersey in the playoffs in the East will be Boston Blitz and New York Knights - with the final Week 10 showdown seeing three teams, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Queens battling it out for the fourth and final playoff berth.

Meanwhile, in the Western Division, the Seattle Sluggers finally showed signs of being beatable as they lost their first game of the season to the Arizona Scorpions. Seattle had hoped to clinch the Western Devision title, but things started going wrong for them when their talisman and MVP leader, GM Hikaru Nakamura, was held to his first draw of the season by GM Alejandro Ramirez.

Seattle, Arizona, San Francisco and Miami have now all clinched playoff spots - and Week 10 (with all matches from both divisions played on 1 night, Wednesday, 4 November) will be the final decider to see who will clinch the Western Division title.

Watch all the final Week 10 action of the regular season live by being a member on ICC and check U.S. Chess League for blog links, games and more. Chess.FM will also have exclusive live commentary of the USCL finals in December with IM Mark Ginsberg and GM Ben Finegold.