Two stories to share with you today:
1) First, as the title suggests, Levon Aronian topped the World Blitz Championships. It's hard to call his victory an upset; while I mentioned that Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura were picking up most of the hype going into the tournament, Aronian had to be one of the other favorites. He finished with a 24.5/38 score, just a half-point ahead of Teimour Radjabov. Aronian actually had a 2.5 point lead with four rounds remaining, but finished up by scoring just 1/4, barely holding off Radjabov's charge. As for the youngsters we spotlighted earlier, Carlsen took 3rd with 23.5 points, and Nakamura shared 4th with Boris Gelfand on 21.5 points.
2) I caught this story about police breaking up chess games in a public park in the New York media, and then again over at ChessBase. Okay, I suppose the reasoning for not wanting adults hanging around the park on their own makes sense, but doesn't this seem like the kind of thing that would merit a warning rather than court appearances? I especially love the line at the end of the story about the fact that one of the men involved had a prior record; I'm sure it's true, but I'm also confident that few (if any) of those crimes were committed while playing blitz.
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