A number of high-profile tournaments took place around Christmastime both domestically and internationally. Between the holidays and coverage of FIDE's rapid and blitz world championships, it's time to catch up on some of the biggest names and news items from the previous month.
The top seed GM Fabiano Caruana beat GM John M.Burke in the third round of the 2021 U.S. Chess Championship and joined the tournament leaders. GM Sam Sevian, who outplayed GM Jeffery Xiong, also joined the top group with 2/3. In the U.S. Women's Championship, two games were decisive but WGM Katerina.