October Top 100 Lists

(Left photo: Organizer Salman Azhar.)

(Right photo: Coaches Alan Kirshner and Ted Castro with 2010 K-3 National Champions.)

I recently updated the CalChess Top 100 and CalChess Top 20 lists for October. The October supplement includes tournaments rated by the first Friday in September, meaning the Labor Day Festival did not make the cut. The age is current as of September 1.

Kudos to 113 local juniors ranked among the top 100 of the nation for their age. Salman Azhar of Bay Area Chess and All Star Coach Ted Castro apparently discovered the mythical Fountain of Youth. No fewer than 50 Northern California kids are nationally ranked for age 10, 9, 8 or 7 & under, the majority affiliated with either Salman or Ted! I can't wait to see how many young masters we'll have in about five years.
(The Chesspunks train with FM Daniel Naroditsky for World Youth. From left to right: Vignesh, Allan, Danya, Kesav and Cameron. Photo from Cameron's blog.)

A record 16 kids age 17 & under are currently rated above 2000, including four in elementary school! New experts this year: Cameron Wheeler, Jack Zhu, Kesav Viswanadha, Daniel Liu, James Kwok and Andrew Yeh. Superstar FM Daniel Naroditsky, incredibly almost 2500, holds the only #1 ranking this month, but nine more youngsters are ranked among the top five for their age, including four #2's. Here's a big round of applause for ten unofficial gold medalists for October!

GOLD MEDAL (top 5)
Advait Budaraju (#4 age 5)
Josiah Stearman (#4 age 7)
Rayan Taghizadeh (#4 age 8)
Michael Wang (#5 age 8)
Samuel Sevian (#2 age 9)
NM Yian Liou (#2 age 13) -- Co-champion of US Cadet Invitational
FM Daniel Naroditsky (#1 age 14)
NM Gregory Young (#2 age 15)
NM Steven Zierk (#4 age 17) -- Winner of Denker High School Invitational
IM Sam Shankland (#2 age 18) -- Winner of US Junior Invitational

Players ranked in the top 15 and top 25 of the country also deserve a special recognition. The names shown in bold and italics are all current or former students of mine.

SILVER MEDAL (top 15)
Ben Rood (#15 age 6)
Anthony Zhou (#8 age 7)
FM Tanuj Vasudeva (#8 age 9)
Cameron Wheeler (#6 age 10)
Vignesh Panchanatham (#10 age 10)
Udit Iyengar (#13 age 10)
Jack Zhu (#7 age 11)
Kesav Viswanadha (#9 age 11)
NM Evan Sandberg (#14 age 17)
NM Rohan Agarwal (#15 age 17)

BRONZE MEDAL (top 25)
Solomon Ge (#21 age 7)
Leyton Ho (#21 age 8)
Jeffrey Tao (#18 age 9)
Colin Chow (#17 age 10)
Richard Yi (#20 age 10)
Allan Beilin (#17 age 11)
Daniel Liu (#16 age 12)
Kyle Shin (#17 age 12)
Paul Richter (#21 age 12) -- CalChess K-12 Co-champion
Andrew Yeh (#30 age 14) -- CalChess K-12 Co-champion
Hayk Manvelyan (#19 age 16)