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Arizona and Chicago Join the USCL Print E-mail
By Jennifer Shahade   
December 28, 2007
USCLmainlogo.jpgThe U.S. Chess League added two new teams for the 2008 season, the Chicago Blaze and the Arizona Scorpions. Logos have not been unveiled yet.

The Arizona Scorpions will be managed by NM Leo Martinez. The Scorpion lineup will include Leo, as well as the following players: IM Levon Altounian, IM Mark Ginsburg and FM Daniel Rensch. Robby Adamson, who penned many articles on the U.S. Chess League for CLO will also join the Scorpions as a team member and an assistant manager. It will be great to see such an enthusiastic USCL supporter get in on the action, but we'll miss our objective reporter. Check out Robby's most in-depth USCL article, on the thrilling Dallas-Boston finale.

The Chicago Blaze is managed by USCF TD Glenn Panner. Sevan Muradian, 2007 USCF organizer of the year is the assistant manager. The squad will include GM Dmitry Gurevich, IM Angelo Young, FM Mehmed Pasalic, and Adam Strunk. The games will be played at the Touch Move Chess Center in Chicago. Manager Glenn Planner says: "This is a team that hopes to be community driven. We will definitely have one of the most blog active teams, with a separate Blaze blog, Brad Rosen's fine blog, the Knights of Castle Kimbark blog, and my own Pannerchess blog."

There's also the U.S. Chess League Game of the Year contest, which includes thousands of dollars in prizes. I was one of the judges, and as the results are revealed, I will blog on some of my choices. (I am sworn to secrecy for now!) You can download the pgn file of the 20 contending games here , and see Arun Sharma and Braden Bournival's thoughts.
 
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