This is the Big Dance. And I mean BIG. Nearly 4800 players have registered with a week to go and
I expect to see up to 5500 kids total. An unofficial world record of 5373 was set in 2005 at Supernationals III in the same venue. The entire humongous resort is sold out, all 2881 rooms. In fact, with a healthy economy, the record would already be history.
The seniors on the
Saratoga High School chess team and I were there in 2005. Four seniors are joined this
year by one junior and three freshmen (
see 2007 team photo at left). This year's squad of
Jeff Young,
Charles Sun,
Brian Wai,
Aaron Garg and
Evan Ye will be slightly higher rated than the one that took 3rd in 2006, but still seeded only about 7th or 8th (1881 average of the top 4) in the incredibly
difficult High School division--14 masters and about 45 experts at the top of a wallchart of more than 335 players. The top ranked team from
Stuyvesant High School (New York City) has IM
Robert Hess, who just last week earned a GM norm by winning the
Spice Spring Invitational, and three experts for a whopping 2177 average. This year for the first time, Saratoga High also fields a team in the K-12 U1600 section:
Alex Lun,
Avinash Kumar and
Sankash Shankar.
The entire
Northern California delegation consists of 40 players right now, but I kn
ow of three who have not yet registered. Five more of my proteges will attend, for a total of over a dozen students. Two more are in the K-12 section and one will compete in each of the K-8, K-6 and K-5 sections. In Fremont,
Mission San Jose Elementary has put together a powerful team (
Jerome Sun,
James Kwok,
Hemang Jangle and
Arman Kalyanpur)
ranked tops in K-6 at 1739, nearly 200 points above the elite New York City schools. Can the California boys shock the nation and win Elementary School nationals? Finally, I received late word that
2007 National High School co-champion Michael Zhong will be attending for an encore.
I have accepted the invitation of MSJE coach Joe Lonsdale to share his big team room in Nashville. I expect many Northern California players to hang out there. The room seats about 80 but there will be only about 45 players plus their parents.
I will be available to review games throughout the entire weekend. Besides the large turnout and tough competition, the most exciting news from Nash
ville seems to be visits by
former World Champion Garry Kasparov,
Women's World Champion
Alexandra Kosteniuk and a variety of other elite Grandmasters including US Champion
Yury Shulman and former US Champions
Alexander Shabalov and
Joel Benjamin.
Kasparov (see photo at right) will make four public appearances, including a book signing on Friday afternoon and playing the first move in round 1 on top board of the High School section.I will be posting daily updates to this blog from Nashville. I also set up my cell phone to make more frequent updates on
Twitter throughout the weekend (
view my Twitter feed at the right sidebar of the blog).
p into the mountains truly feels like a mini-vacation. Each year, the two Reno tournaments attract more chess players than any of the adult events that the Bay Area has to offer. Plus there's the opportunity to watch, learn from and compete with strong masters. GM Melik Khachiyan (see photo at right) won the 2008 edition ahead of GM Sergey Kudrin, FM Alexandre Kretchetov and local youngsters FM Daniel Naroditsky and NM Steven Zierk.
