Baseball
Matanzas woke up today in the 2nd seat of the 54th Cuban Baseball Championship, only 1 game behind the leader Ciego de Ávila, after overcoming 10-5 to Las Tunas on Monday while getting its 4th straight victory.

Los Cocodrilos deployed a 12-hits offensive led by designated batter Norel González, 5-3, with 4 RBIs; won reliever Adrián Sosa, who disseminated 2 hits and didn't allow any cleans in 4 innings.

Also, Los Tigres fell 5-1 against Granma, with credit for Alain Tamayo and offensive role of catcher Alexander Guerra with 1 homer and 3 RBIs for the winners.

Meanwhile, Industriales exceeded 5-4 to Guantánamo thanks to decisive homers of Lisbán Correa and Alexander Malleta.

And guided by strong performance of lefty Julio Alfredo Martinez and offensive role of outfielder Julio Alberto León, author of 1 homer and 2 trailers, the current monarch Pinar del Río returned to winning ways to overcome 8-1 to Sancti Spiritus.

Parallel, Leorisbel Sánchez threw 9 excellent innings, struck out 6 and allowed only 5 hits to take the modest Cienfuegos to a closed 2-0 win over Santiago de Cuba with offensive highlight of Yusniel Ibáñez, 4-3, including 1 homer.

Finally, Villa Clara took revenge of 10-2 on Isla de la Juventud, Artemisa crushed 11-4 to Holguín and Camagüey battled for 12 innings to win 5-4 to Mayabeque.

Boxing
Cuban boxing took 6 wins during the 1st round of the Mohammed VI Cup, held in the Moroccan city of Marrakech, which brings together exponents from 14 countries, including 62 in the men's sector.

The sweep included the Olympic champion Roniel Iglesias, airy 3-0 in the welterweight division on Egyptian Moahmoud Abdelmaouj Hamdi, and the triumphs of the two-time world champions Lázaro Álvarez and Julio César La Cruz on Senegalese Wade Ibrahina and Ibrahim Sarr in the light and semi-complete categories, respectively.

Also won the cruise Erislandy Savón by 3-0 to Spanish Dress Ashain Lemsayah and medium Arlén López over Hungarian Karoly Kabai, while light welterweight and Olympic bronze Yasnier Toledo won 2-1 to host Hamza El-Barbari, runner-up holder in the last Cuba's Córdova Cardin Tournament.

Thus, Savón, Arlén, Toledo, the mini-flyweight Santiago Amador and flyweight Yosbany Veitía secured bronze, while Lázaro and Roniel will be on the stage again today Tuesday and featherweight and Olympic king Robeisy Ramirez will debut. The super complete Yoandris Toirac debuts for gold on Friday 17th.

Chess

Cuban GM Leinier Dominguez was defeated again during the 9th round of the Baku Chess Grand Prix, where 6 of the 12 players share the top.

Leinier (2751 Elo units) was beaten for the 3rd time, this time with black pieces at the hands of Russian Dmitry Andreikin (2722) in 56 moves of a Queen Pawn Opening.

This day also included unexpected defeats of the Italian Fabiano Caruana (2844) and Israeli Boris Gelfand (2748), previous leaders of the tournament, at the hands of Russian Alexander Grischuk (2797) and local Shakriyar Mamedyarov (2764), in that order.

In other results, American Hikaru Nakamura (2764) won over Uzbek Rustan Kasimdzhanov (2706) to appear on top as well with 5 units; Russians Sergey Karjakin (2767) and Peter Svidler ( 2732), and Azeri Teimour Radjabov (2726) drew their matches and are the other members of the leading group.

Karjakin and Radjabov played between them, while Svidler signed peace with his compatriot Evgeny Tomashevsky (2701), as published in the website of the organizers.

Today's matches include Leinier-Caruana, Gelfand-Radjabov, Nakamura-Mamedyarov, Karjakin-Svidler, Tomashevsky-Andreikin and Kasimdzhanov-Grischuk.

Badminton

Cuba's Osleni Guerrero will participate in the Pan-American Badminton Championship, based in Toronto, Canada beginning October 16th to defend the title won last year.

Guerrero, Guadalajara 2011 Pan-American runner-up, won the gold medal in that continental competition held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in October 2013.

For this occasion, the Havana-born athlete, main racket in the Americas, will be the top seed of the event in Canada, to which he will then perform a useful training base in Spain.

The Cuban representative will then have a good chance to train in order to get in good shape for the Central American and Caribbean Games in Veracruz, Mexico, to be held from November 14th to 30th, where he hopes to win 2 crowns, in the individual and doubles for male.

In Veracruz, Guerrero should face off the best rackets of the United States, Guatemala and Brazil.

Among his results this Season there are 2 titles, one gotten in the Peru Open and the other in the Venezuela's International Tournament, plus the bronzes of Havana's Giraldilla, and the Grand Prix of Brazil.

Also this year, he competed twice in a World Cup, though being once eliminated in the opening round.

However, on more than one occasion, he has shown the proper conditions to get higher results in a sport almost entirely dominated by Asian and European players.