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Shirov beats Leko and Loek Van Wely defeated Nigel Short in the A Section. All other A games were drawn. Anand,Carlsen and Kramnik early favorites were all held to draws today. Ernie

Usa went into Round 6 tied for 1st with Russia. By virtue of defeating the American Team Russia technically was in 1st. Us Defeats Greece today 2.5-1.5 with Nakamura winning on Board 1 again. He is now 5.5/6 with a performance rating over 3000 before today's game. USA drew the other games on Boards 2,3,3. In the Russian Match still in progress as of this writing. Grischul drew on Board 1...Morozevich lost on Board 2. Russia appears to be winning on Board 3 and I think the Armenian player is up a pawn on Board 4 but I don't think he has enough to win. So I am picking a 2-2 tie in Russia's Match vs Armenia which would give the US team sole possession on 1st Place... Ernie J

Did you watch Chess TV on Wednesday 11 November as IM David Pruess and friends covered Round 6 of the Tal Memorial? I did. What was your opinion of their coverage? Did it enhance your experience? They certainly have more ideas when they look at a position than I have.

I've decided to start a forum for kibitzing about the World Cup. Here's the Results page with links to all games: http://cup2009.fide.com/results.php Here are the brackets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_World_Cup_2009 You'll have to scroll down a bit on the Wikipedia page to get to the brackets. Here's a discussion starter: What's up with the finish of Shulman-Savchenko (Game 2, Match 55)? Savchenko blunders a Rook in a drawish position, Shulman takes it, and the game is immediately drawn? Perhaps there was some sort of issue during the game that we don't know about, where Shulman offered a draw for the sake of sportsmanship, or perhaps the move list on the java board is erroneous (there are 128 games posted; it's not all that unlikely that one of them contains that sort of error). There are 19 pairs of players that are going to be decided by tiebreaks.

I've been following the Tal Memorial, and wondering how the crosstable would be different if Carlsen were healthy, but I have to ask: What are your thoughts about the World Blitz Championship to follow? I am of the opinion that no blitz tournament deserves that name unless Nakamura is playing:) After all, many consider him to be the best blitz player in the world, he beat WBC participant Ponomariov two for two in San Sebastian, and he did beat Grischuk 14.5-5.5 in an ICC match at 3 0! I suppose that 3 0 is very different from 10 0, or whatever time control they're going to use in the WBC, but still... I guess he's at least going to get a crack at the world elite at Wijk in January, but I wish he were playing at the World Blitz Championship.

Anand holds the world title, Carlsen is number one on the "live" rating list, Topalov is number one on the FIDE list, and Kramnik has won both major tournaments in which he has participated in 2009 (Dortmund and Tal Memorial). In your opinion, who has proven the most?