Scoreboard

Chess

In the Challengers group of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in the Netherlands, Ivan Saric of Croatia clinched victory with one round to spare. In the Masters group, Levon Aronian of Armenia, the world’s second-ranked player, did the same but then scored his only loss in the final round.

The Zurich Chess Challenge, a combination of classic and blitz games, saw Fabiano Caruana lead in the blitz games. He couldn’t, however, catch up with Magnus Carlsen’s performance in classic, which also contribute double to the total point score. Overall, Carlsen was the winner, followed by Caruana, Levon Aronian, Hikaru Nakamura, Viswanathan Anand, and Boris Gelfand.

Two playoff games were required for Ivan Cheparinov of Bulgaria to win the masters section of the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival and a £20,000 prize.

Ronald Terubea claimed the National Blitz Open Chess Championship title in Fiji by defeating the Fiji Chess Federation’s Vice President in a tie-breaker game.

Twelve-year-old Saurabh Anand of India took home a trophy nearly bigger than himself after winning the first South Asian Amateur Chess Championship in Kathmandu, Nepal.

The champion of the Batang Pinoy Blitz Tournament was Woman FIDE Master Shania Mae Mendoza.

A Philippine, Jelvis Arandela Calvelo, also won the Melaka Chess Open in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A fourth-grader, Andrew Glassford, won the K-8 section of the MLK Classic in Montgomery, Alabama.

Magic: The Gathering

A change-up of strategies in the final 8 worked for Fabien Li as he took home the winner’s trophy at the last Theros limited event, Grand Prix Kuala Lumpur.

Alexander Hayne of Canada was undefeated in the final 8 of Grand Prix Vancouver, which also marked his third GP title in 6 months.

Scrabble

At the Crossword Kerala State Scrabble Championship in India, Lloyd Pearse took the overall title and Asha Kamath the title in the women’s section.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

Navigating the new War of the Giants drafting process, Christian George of New York dueled his way to the top at the Atlanta inaugural of the 2014 Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series. In the Dragon Duel section for younger players, the winner was Oliver Hinton. Both will receive invitations to the 2014 World Championship Qualifier.

Backgammon

Kenji Nishizawa of Japan won the Istanbul Open Backgammon Championship, besting 124 players in the championship section. Over 20 countries were represented despite no money prize.

At the Texas Backgammon Championships, the winner among 72 players in the championship section was Masayuki Mochizuki of Japan. In the West qualifier for the U.S. Backgammon Federation National Championship winner was Jonah Seewald of Colorado.

Rubik’s Cube

The winner of the Berkley Winter tournament was Richard Jay S. Apagar, who completed the standard 3×3 in an average of 9.05 seconds. Brandon Harnish, however, put in an outstanding performance in Skewb, with a North American record best-single of 4.31 seconds and a world record average of 6.21 seconds.

A European single Skewb record of 4.69 seconds was set by Oscar Roth Andersen at the Skanderborg Open in Denmark.

At the CCFC Winter in Connecticut, Noah Arthurs completed a 4×4 blindfolded in 3:31.22 for a North American record.