Ricky Gomez, who owns the award-winning Cuban bar and restaurant Palomar on the Central Eastside, is likely going to run for one of the 12 Portland City Council seats up for grabs next year.

I havent officially declared yet and am still in the process of evaluating the position and election cycle, Gomez said in an email to WW.

Another likely hopeful is Chad Lykins, owner of Rose City Chess, a chess club thats coached winning chess teams for years. Lykins is likely to run in District 4, which includes all of the westside and a sliver of Southeast Portland. Lykins holds a doctorate in leadership and policy studies from Vanderbilt University and is Oregons delegate to the United States Chess Federation.

Lykins declined to comment, saying he wont be answering any questions from the media about City Council for at least a few more weeks.

Gomez and Lykins join a growing list of City Council hopefuls. More than 15 candidates so far have either filed for the citys Small Donor Elections program, registered a political action committee with the state, or publicly declared their intent to run in one of the new City Councils four geographic voting districts next year.

The future City Council is a dramatic expansion of the current five-member council thanks to a ballot measure approved by voters last fall that radically reshaped how the city functions, including the role of the City Council itself. Members of the council will no longer manage a portfolio of bureaus as they do under the current system; instead, they will be full-time city policymakers. Bureaus will be managed by a professional city administrator.

Candidates in the running already include Robin Ye, chief of staff to state Rep. Khanh Pham (D-East Portland); transportation advocate Steph Routh; city Housing Bureau employee Chris Flanary; and Tony Morse, policy director at Oregon Recovers.

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A Chess Coach and a Restaurateur Are Likely to Join Portland City ... - Willamette Week

After beating the World Number 2, Fabiano Caruana, and the World Number 3, Hikaru Nakamura, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa faltered at the very last hurdle. He took Magnus Carlsen into tiebreaks at the World Cup final but the World Number 1 finally put it across the 18-year-old.

However, Prag and his cohort of young Indian compatriots made a huge impression. So did a couple of young players from other countries. Its apparent that chess is on the verge of seeing a generational shift. And, that shift is likely to heavily favour India.

The chess World Cup is one of the most prestigious events on the calendar. Its played on a Wimbledon-style knockout format with progressively shorter time controls and sudden death invoked to ensure every match has a winner. The Open section offers roughly Euro 160,000 in prize money with even the first-round losers getting something.

Even more importantly, the World Cup offers three places in the Candidates cycle from which the challenger to the world champion is selected. This is a gruelling process where eight Candidates duke it out for the right to challenge the champion. The title cycle itself is worth several million in prize money the 2023 match saw Euro 2 million split 55:45 between the two players and the Candidates itself has a minimum Euro 500,000 prize fund.

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Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Why we must brag about Prag: His loss to chess number one Carlsen doesnt alter the fact that young Indians - Times of India

They presented an unusual, but striking, sight. You normally wouldnt expect European women in sarees on stage for the closing ceremony of a chess tournament.

They may have been wearing the unstitched Indian garment for the first time in their lives, but at the Bhasha Bhawan auditorium of Kolkatas National Library, they managed it as well as they did the pieces on the chessboard, at the Tata Steel Chess India tournament. It was the first time that women were playing in Indias only elite chess event.

The organisers, Tata Steel, ensured that their first ever womens tournament was special. They gave the women the same prize money as the men.

I dont remember a (chess) tournament where the prize-fund was the same for both men and women, said Anna Muzychuk of Ukraine, during the draw of lots on the eve of the event. Because such a tournament didnt exist.

Muzychuk was a beneficiary of the organisers decision to implement equal pay: she won the rapid section. A year later, she will be back to defend her title for the fifth edition of the tournament, which opens on August 31.

There is bound to be more interest in this years tournament, given the kind of unprecedented following in the country the recent Chess World Cup, which concluded at Baku a few days ago, had. Praggnanandhaa was very much the star in the tournament, as he made it to the final.

His compatriots had also done well there. In fact, four of the eight quarterfinalists were Indians D. Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi and Vidit Gujrathi being the others. All of them will feature at the Tata Steel Chess India.

Arjun was the winner last year in the blitz section. In the rapid, he was the runner-up, while Gujrathi was third.

Arjun seems to love this event. In 2021, he had won the rapid and was the runner-up in blitz.

That edition of the tournament proved a breakthrough for the teenager from Warangal. At the time he wasnt as well-known as his contemporaries like Praggnanandhaa or Gukesh, but now he is one of the stars of Indias golden generation of chess players threatening to dominate the world.

Tata Steel Chess India has attracted the worlds top talents. The inaugural edition, held in 2018, itself had big stars like Hikaru Nakamura, Levon Aronian, Wesley So, Sergey Karjakin and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Indias own Viswanathan Anand, who defied age to win the blitz title. Nakamura came first in the rapid event.

The man who ended Anands reign as the World champion, Magnus Carlsen, was the biggest attraction in the second edition of the tournament. Not surprisingly, he triumphed. The overall champion was decided by adding points from the blitz and rapid sections. The Norwegian finished with four points more than the second-placed Nakamura.

After a break enforced by the coronavirus, the tournament returned in 2021. Aronian and Le Quang Liem, a former World blitz champion, were among the main players from overseas.

Aronian won the blitz, beating the rapid champion Arjun in the tie-breaker. He had an explanation for why his young rival didnt win the blitz title. The only reason is... that Arjun is a very strong chess player, but physically he is not strong enough to carry two cups, he said at the closing ceremony, making the packed auditorium laugh.

After taking part in the first three editions, Aronian wasnt there for last years tournament, in which Nihal Sarin won the rapid section, ahead of strong rivals like Nakamura, So, Mamedyarov and Nodirbek Abdusattorov. Another Indian champion last year was R. Vaishali, Praggnanandhaas elder sister, who surprised everyone by winning the womens title.

This time around, two strong Chinese players add further glamour to the womens field. Ju Wenjun is the reigning Womens World champion, while Lei Tingjie is the runner-up. The duo had contested the final back home in China last month.

Nino Batsiashvili and Irina Krush are the other foreigners in the womens section, besides Ushenina. Former Womens World rapid champion Koneru Humpy, Dronavalli Harika, Savitha Shri, Vantika Agarwal and Vaishali complete the line-up.

The mens field is headed by the 2021 World blitz champion Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Alexander Grischuk, Teimour Radjabov, Vincent Keymer and Abdusattorov are the other foreigners in the fray. Praggnanandhaa, Gukesh, Gujrathi, P. Harikrishna and Arjun form a strong Indian contingent.

Those players could expect strong support from the chess lovers of Kolkata, who arrive in large numbers to watch their favourite players in action. You would find the auditorium often full.

The passionate chess fans of Kolkata have shown that their city is indeed the ideal host for Indias only world-class tournament. Tata Steel also deserves credit for bringing the worlds top stars to India and giving an excellent opportunity for the countrys young talent.

Sports has been a way of life for us at Tata Steel for over a century now, says Chanakya Chaudhary, Vice President, Corporate Services, Tata Steel. We continue to promote sporting activities and thereby engage with the community in a conscious and meaningful way. We are encouraged by the enthusiasm and participation we have received from the city of Kolkata over the past years, and are determined to make this world class chess competition even better.

Anand has been the tournaments ambassador since 2021. I am extremely delighted that chess is slowly but steadily becoming a global sport which is being followed widely, he says. Tournaments like Tata Steel Chess India where our young players fight it out with international Grandmasters really help the cause of producing newer champions. This format has already shown some results, as is visible with our young brigade doing well at international tournaments, such as the World Cup in Baku.

At Baku, Praggnanandhaa had done India proud, despite losing to Carlsen in the final which had gone to the tie-breaker. He should be keen to do well in a tournament at home. As will the other young Indian stars.

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Tata Steel tournament a solid platform that takes Indian chess forward - The Hindu

PUNE: GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly is impressed by the quality of India players rated between 1800 and 2000. Still, the six-time national champion is not happy about the championship losing its premier status. There has to be some qualifying path for the Nationals, said Ganguly. It can be a combination of all titled players plus state entries via qualifying and donor entries with a minimum rating of Elo 2200 or so. We cant have a diluted field. The All India Chess Federation (AICF) made the national tournament open, meaning anybody could play it by paying a donor entry of Rs 12,500. It resulted in the championship having an average rating of 1726, almost 500 points lower than the original minimum FIDE rating. No. 3 seed SP Sethuraman won the title with a 14-move draw (another climax-related issue with Swiss League format) in the last round with Mitrabha Guha. None of the players in the meet attained any norm. Average rating of opponents was that bad. But it was expected once 300-plus entries for an 11-round event were taken when only 100 entries may have given fair final standings and better matchups. We have to attract top guys in this championship, said 40-year-old Ganguly, who played the tournament for the first time since 2008 because he knew there was no pressure on him to win it. Give better conditions and increase prize money for the Nationals and higher rated players would turn up. The current prize for the winner is Rs 6 lakh. But it could not attract any of the top-11 and 17 of top 20 players in India. The progress of Indian chess (five players rated Elo 2700-plus, 80-plus Grandmasters) is way faster than its organisational growth. Organizers are consistently dependent on government funding and some big-hearted patrons. Chess being not spectator friendly sport is cited as one reason for not having the financial bandwidth to conduct national championship with elite India players. With chess stakeholders being inactive spectators, the decline of the national championship from being an elite round-robin event to being just a practice tournament (with bigger government grants) is now complete.

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GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly unhappy with weak National Championship - IndiaTimes