GM Yury Shulman of Barrington, IL played in the US Closed Championship. The field was divided into two sections. The top two players in each section (including Yury) played semi-final matches, with Yury winning his match against GM Robert Hess. That put Yury into the finals versus Gata Kamsky. Kamsky won the championship with a score of 1.5 to .5 over the two final games. Last year ended with Yury never losing a game and Gata winning the match by drawing both play-off games at the regular time control, both games of the tie-breaker match at the quicker time control and then drawing the final Armageddon game (Gata bid a lower amount of time to get black and draw odds). Follow the coverage at http://saintlouischessclub.org/.