(Photos of the top Bay Area chess masters: #2 IM Sam Shankland, #1 GM Vinay Bhat and #6 FM Daniel Naroditsky.)
Eight months have passed since I last posted the Top 20 Adults list for Northern California. I can report relatively few changes; most notably Japanese FM Shinsaku Uesugi began attending UC Berkeley. The top junior, 14 year old FM Daniel Naroditsky, moved up three spots to #6 after gaining 56 points to 2482. And a few players returned to the rankings after briefly dropping off due to inactivity (e.g. GM Walter Browne).
The four former residents of the GM House in El Cerrito (it closed last May) still occupy the top spots, with GM Vinay Bhat ranked #1 by a single point over US Junior Champion IM Sam Shankland. Both Vinay and Sam spend time outside of the Bay Area; Vinay travels around Europe (primarily Spain) while Sam started classes at Brandeis University (in Boston). By the way, if you enjoy studying well annotated games, then I highly recommend bookmarking Vinay's chess blog.
CalChess Top 20 Masters
(Fpawn's former students in red)
1 GM Bhat, Vinay 2560
2 IM Shankland, Sam 2559
3 GM Friedel, Josh 2554
4 GM Kraai, Jesse 2551
5 GM Browne, Walter 2520
6 FM Naroditsky, Daniel 2482
7 IM Florean, Andrei 2477
8 IM DeGuzman, Ricardo 2460
9 SM Kotlyar, Gregory 2435
10 FM Zierk, Steven 2431
11 IM Zilberstein, Dmitry 2421
12 IM Pruess, David 2411
13 FM Uesugi, Shinsaku 2399
14 IM Mezentsev, Vladimir 2394
15 IM Donaldson, John 2389
16 IM Tate, Emory 2389
17 IM Grefe, John 2340
18 FM Lee, Andy 2340
19 FM Cusi, Ronald 2332
20 NM Young, Gregory 2328
