Every story in this episode is in the First Look Chess newsletter, with the links, the games, and the PGNs to download: firstlookchess.com

In this episode:

• US Chess has awarded 23 Women's Program grants for 2026-27, the same count as a year ago, to nonprofit affiliates running programs for women and girls, with the money again coming from the Saint Louis Chess Club.
• Fabiano Caruana said on the C-Squared Podcast that the United States "didn't really have a realistic chance of gold" at the Samarkand Olympiad, where the team finished fourth on 17 match points, and that "All of us underperformed except for Levon," RookReview reports.
• TWIC #1669 closes the week with 8,091 games from 51 events: Javokhir Sindarov's Clutch Chess title in Saint Louis, Gawain Maroroa Jones's fourth English Championship, Marc'Andria Maurizzi's 8/9 at Cap d'Agde, Andy Woodward's Titled Tuesday win on tiebreak, and a 3 0 Thursday event in which Caruana beat Evan Yin, Rose Atwell and Zachary Tanenbaum.
• FIDE has named Peter Leko and Peter Svidler as commentators for the Salesforce FIDE World Championship in Geneva, ChessBase India reports from the federation's post on X, three weeks before Gukesh Dommaraju and Javokhir Sindarov open at the Fondation Martin Bodmer in Cologny on November 24.
• Denis Lazavik (2636) beat IM Sauat Nurgaliyev (2526) in round eight of the KazChess Masters in Almaty to lead on 6 points, half a point ahead of Daniil Dubov and Shamsiddin Vokhidov (2649), who beat IM Alua Nurman (2460), Trend reports; an r/chess post says Lazavik went on to win the event with an unbeaten classical run of 38 games, but Tuesday's final round is not yet on the relay.

The Opening is written from the day's evidence and checked by the same fact rules as the newsletter; the voice is synthetic. Powered by AI, guided by human expertise.