Happy New Year, chess fans! Here's hoping that 2011 sees your rating soar to new heights, and that you'll accomplish all your goals both on and off the board in the coming year. If you've made any chess-related resolutions, feel free to share in the comments.

For chess fans, January has traditionally meant the coming of the annual Wijk aan Zee tournament, which has had several sponsors (most recently, Corus) over the years. This year, it's Tata Steel that's running the show, and as usual, they've brought in a superb cast of chess stars to play in the first supertournament of the year.

Group A of the tournament is always one of the toughest invitationals of the year, featuring many of the world's top players. Magnus Carlsen, Viswanathan Anand, Levon Aronian, Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Grischuk and Hikaru Nakamura are all playing, meaning that six of the top ten players in the world will be in attendance. In total, the 14 players have an average rating of 2740!

The B and C groups are nothing to sneeze at, either. Group B seems to get stronger every year, with this edition featuring a field of 14 grandmasters. Radek Wojtaszek is the highest-rated player of the bunch, but more famous names in the group include David Navara, Wesley So, Luke McShane and Jon Ludvig Hammer. Group C sees seven grandmasters mixed with seven International Masters, each of whom will be looking to pick up a valuable GM norm. The names here aren't as big, but many players will recognize Ukrainian grandmaster Katherina Lahno, one of the world's top female players.

All the action from Wijk aan Zee begins on January 14. I'll be sure to provide updates during the event!

Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan has struck again, adding the 2010 Women's World Chess Championship to her growing list of accomplishments. In the final, she faced off against her countrywoman Ruan Lufei, a less-heralded but very capable player in her own right.

At first, the best-of-four final appeared to be going as expected. After a draw, Hou Yifan won the second game to take a 1.5-0.5 lead. A draw in the third game meant that Yifan only needed to avoid a loss in the fourth and final game in order to take home the title.

But the 16-year-old was shocked in the last game, as Ruan came up with the win she needed to extend the match. In the rapid tiebreaks, the match went exactly the same way until the final game, when Hou was able to win this time and put away the match by a 3-1 score.

Hou Yifan has broken several records in women's chess, becoming the youngest female grandmaster ever, and the youngest finalist in the Women's World Championship. Appropriately, she now also holds the record for being the youngest woman to hold the Championship -- a title she's likely to capture several times in her career.

FIDE released their final list of participants for the next World Championship Candidates cycle, with no huge surprises. If you hadn't heard that Magnus Carlsen had vowed to drop out of the event, you might be surprised to see his name missing; the deadline for signing contracts was yesterday, and with Carlsen not changing his mind by then, it officially became official.

More importantly though, here are the list of players who will battle for the right to challenge Viswanathan Anand for his title:

1. Veselin Topalov: Qualified by losing the previous World Championship match.

2. Gata Kamsky: Qualified by being the runner-up in the previous Candidates cycle.

3. Vladimir Kramnik: Qualified by rating.

4. Levon Aronian: Qualified by winning the 2008-2009 FIDE Grand Prix.

5. Alexander Grischuk: Qualified based on performance in the FIDE Grand Prix.

6. Teimour Radjabov: Qualified based on performance in the FIDE Grand Prix.

7. Boris Gelfand: Qualified by winning the 2009 FIDE World Cup.

8. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov: Wild card selection.

After starting with two losses in his first three games, Magnus Carlsen rallied back to win his second consecutive London Chess Classic. Using the 3-1-0 scoring system, Carlsen led the table with 13 points, two points ahead of both Viswanathan Anand and the surprising Luke McShane, who had a great result in a tournament where he was rated 7th out of the eight participants.

Carlsen would have tied with Anand and McShane in a standard scoring system (all three would have finished on 4.5/7 points), but the emphasis put on wins at this event gave him a clear victory. A mild controversy was averted by Carlsen winning in the first round; since "wins" is often the first tiebreak used in other top-flight tournaments anyway, Carlsen would have likely won even if the "football" scoring system wasn't in effect. Had Carlsen drawn his last game against Nigel Short, he would have had 11 points, and taken the title on tiebreaks despite being a half-point behind on traditional scoring.

Personally, I don't think there's much of a dilemma there; the players knew what the scoring system was going into the tournament, making the traditional scoring method irrelevant in terms of what happened here. Of course, it's perfectly reasonable to be against the scoring system in general (while I don't care strongly one way or another, I understand the argument that it can lead to sloppy play by enticing players to overextend in an attempt to win unwinnable games), but once the tournament is underway, it's hard to dispute that the only scoring system that matters is the one being used. Other sports have occasional changes to their scoring in specified tournaments; for instance, see the Stableford System which is occasionally used for golf tournaments. Perhaps a more relevant example is the popular Asian board game of Go, which features slight scoring and handicap changes between tournaments (and especially between countries) that can slightly alter play at the professional level. When the concept of komi, a handicap given to the second player as compensation for the disadvantage of playing second, was introduced to professional play, it was controversial to say the least -- but more than 70 years later, Go is still Go.

American fans might be slightly disappointed at Hikaru Nakamura's 4th place finish, but the result was better than it sounds. His +1 score was another excellent showing against world-class competition, and included a win with Black against Vladimir Kramnik, which is always a big victory. Naka is having a great year, and appears poised to both cross the 2750 barrier and break into the top 10 in the world rankings.