US Chess League

Hey Guys,

A few weeks ago I updated the progress of the 2012 season at it's halfway point. Here we are again almost at the completion of the regular season. The season has been full of surprising games, controversy, upsets, and blunders. Pretty much everything that you could want in one season. There is one week left to play for the Western Division and 2 for most of the teams in the Eastern Division.

The Western Division playoff race has already ended. The only thing up for grabs is which seed each team will get.

The Standings look like this:

1. Dallas (7.0 - 2.0)

2. St. Louis (5.5 - 3.5)

3. Seattle (5.5 - 3.5)

4. Arizona (4.5 - 4.5)

5. Miami   (3.5 - 5.5)

6. Carolina (3.0 - 6.0)

7. San Francisco (3.0 - 6.0)

8. Los Angeles (2.5 -6.5)

The top 4 places have already been decided and the only thing left to see is where each team will fall in the 2nd-4th place category. Having the second place seed is a big advantage because you get draw odds in the first match of the playoffs, so there is still much left to play for.

The standings on the East are nowhere near as clear as the West. The West's playoffs picture has already formed and it seems that almost every team in the Eastern Division is fighting to make it in for sure. The Standings in the East look like this:

1. Philadelphia (5.5 - 2.5)

2. New York (5.0 - 3.0)

3. Manhattan (4.5 - 3.5)

4. Baltimore (4.5 - 3.5)

5. New Jersey (4.5 - 3.5)

6. Boston (4.0 - 5.0)

7. Connecticut (3.5 - 4.5)

8. New England (3.0 - 6.0)

New England is the only team not eligible to make the playoffs. If you have any interest in the US Chess League you should definitely check out these last two weeks. It's going to be very exciting to see which teams end up in each position.

Here is a little action from my team, the Arizona Scorpions in the past week or two: The first game I want to show is a game of mine that I played this week against Saint Louis GM Andre Diamant. The game started out with a quiet English but become very tactical, only to eventually fizzle out into a "normal" endgame. The endgame was unpleasant for me and I ended up spoiling it a bit and I wanted to test anyone reading this to see if they could see how White could have won on move 40. Besides that mistake the game was played reasonably by both sides.

Here is a game played in Week 8 by Robby Adamson against Eric Rodriguez from the Miami Sharks. We really needed to win this match in order to pass them in the standings and this game was a tough one to watch live due to the crazy nature of the game and the team situation.

Hope you enjoyed the games and will check out the rest of the regular season and playoffs here Chess.com on the upcoming Wednesdays. Thanks!