SuperNationals Update #2

The storm has landed. Let the madness begin.  (Photo by Elliott Liu)

The challenge on the first two or three rounds of any Nationals tournament is simply to survive the upset parade.  Case in point: the top seed in K-9 lost in the first round and the second seed lost in the third round, to Bay Area expert Joshua Cao!  Amazingly, all but two of the Bay Area stars have survived three rounds without any blemishes--one kid drew and the other lost.  Of course, the competition will tighten up today.

After round 4, I count 7 perfect scores and another 7 kids who are just 0.5 off the pace.  So far, so good!  Special mention goes to Milind Maiti for beating the World U8 bronze medalist!

---

Standings After Round 3
After Round 4 in Blue
Click here for Pairings and Standings

K-12 Championship (327 players)

Taylor McCreary (1837) - 2.0 - 2.0

K-9 Championship (145 players)

FM Cameron Wheeler (2291) - 3.0 - 3.5
NM Vignesh Panchanatham (2202) - 3.0 - 4.0
Joshua Cao (2030) - 3.0 - beat #2 seed NM Velikanov (2293) - 3.0
Pranav Srihari (1884) - 2.0 - 3.0
Vikram Vasan (1837) - 2.0 - 2.5
Justin Wang (1714) - 2.0- 2.5
Daniel Ho (1856) - 1.5 - 2.5 
Kennedy Middle School - 4 players - 10.5/16 and in 2nd place
Irvington High School - 4 players - 8.0/16 and in 6th place

K-8 Championship (256 players)

Allan Beilin (2161) - 3.0 - 4.0
Siddharth Banik (2117) - 3.0 - 4.0
Armaan Kalyanpur (1933) - 2.0 - 3.0
Shalin Shah (1615) - 2.0 - 2.0
Sayan Das (1411) - 2.0 - 3.0
Alvin Kong (1662) - 1.0 - 2.0
Hopkins Junior High School - 6 players - 10.0/16 and in 5th place

K-6 Championship (198 players)

FM Tanuj Vasudeva (2150) - 2.5 - 3.5
Amit Sant (1735) - 2.0 - 2.5
David Pan (1503) - 2.0 - 2.0
Christophen Pan (1366) - 2.0 - 2.0
Anjan Das (1151) - 2.0 - 2.0
Mission San Jose Elementary - 8 players - 8.5/16 and in ??? place

K-5 Championship (355 players)

Rayan Taghizadeh (2021) - 3.0 - 4.0 and sitting at board 1
Anthony Zhou (1741) - 2.5 - 3.5
Ganesh Murugappan (1761) - 2.0 - 3.0
Jason Zhang (1497) - 2.0 - 3.0
Daniel Mendelevitch (1405) - 2.0 - 2.0
William Sartorio (1358) - 2.0 - 2.5
Serafina Show (1320) - 2.0 - 2.0
Jeremy Chen (1002) - 2.0 - 2.0
Joanna Liu (1847) - 1.5 - 2.5
Atri Surapaneni (1345) - 1.0 - 2.0
Gomes Elementary School - 5 players - 11.0/16 and in 5th place
Weibel Elementary School - 6 players - 9.5/16 and in 12th place

K-3 Championship (278 players)

Andrew Hong (1692) - 3.0 - 3.5
Milind Maiti (1612) - 3.0 - 4.0 - beat World U8 bronze medalist Christopher Shen (1866)
Rishith Susarla (1609) - 3.0 - 3.0
Callaghan Mccarty-Snead (1485) - 2.5- 3.5
Oliver Wu (1366) - 2.5 - 3.5
Ben Rood (1798) - 2.0 - 3.0
Chenyi Zhao (1558) - 2.0 - 3.0
Louis Law (1118) - 2.0 - 2.0
Eshaan Mistry (899) - 2.0 - 2.0
Edwin Thomas (1022) - 1.0 - 2.0
Aaron Lee (763) - 1.0 - 2.0
Weibel Elementary School - 4 players - 9.5/16 and in 8th place
Mission San Jose Elementary - 6 players - 8.5/16 and in 9th place

K-1 Championship (349 players)

Chinguun Bayaraa (1644) - 3.0 and still occupying board 1 - 4.0
Maurya Palusa (1306) - 3.0 - 4.0
Kevin Pan (1277) - 3.0 - 3.5
Stephen He (808) - 2.0 - 3.0
Pradyum Chitlu (806) - 2.0 - 3.0
Aidan Chen (781) - 2.0 - 3.0
Weslie Chen (664) - 2.0 - 3.0
Vasudeva Rao (588) - 2.0 - 3.0
Aaron Hu (515) - 2.0 - 3.0
Arnav Lingannagari (494) - 2.0 - 3.0
Mission San Jose Elementary - 8 players  - 12.5/16 and in 3rd place
Weibel Elementary School - 4 players - 11.5/16 and in 8th place

---

If I missed anyone worthy of mention, please email me or leave a message on Facebook.

9-12 champ Joshua Cao

Denker qualifier Sudarshan Seshadri

Held just two weeks ago, memories of the 2012 CalChess Scholastics have quietly faded into the past.  Fortunately, you can revisit the weekend through the lens of ace photographer Richard Shorman.  

2-time 6-8 champ Neel Apte

4-6 champ Siddharth Banik

Click to view a Facebook album of 225 photos, many of smiling young chess players.


Thousands of photos from many dozens of other events are available at www.ChessDryad.com.

4-5 champ Ben Rood

Trophies!!! :-)

CalChess Scholastic Champions!

The 37th annual CalChess Scholastics took place last weekend at the traditional venue, the Santa Clara Convention Center.  A total of 844 youngsters played in one of 14 different sections, ranging from Kindergarten and K-3 Unrated up to the competitive 6-8 and 9-12 Championships.  Thanks to organizer Salman Azhar, CalChess President Tom Langland, Chief Tournament Director John McCumiskey and the rest of the staff for putting this event together.

Without further ado, here are the 2012 State Champions!  Congratulations to all!!

High School 9-12: Joshua Cao and Sudarshan Seshadri
Middle School 6-8: Neel Apte
Elementary 4-6: Siddharth Banik
Elementary 4-5: Ben Rood
Primary 1-3: John A. Chan 

Click here for crosstables.

I focused mostly on the High School section, headed by a quintet of experts and several former students.  While most of the top seeds struggled in 9-12, two surprise winners emerged: 8th grader Joshua and 1835 rated Sudarshan!  Joshua took home the 1st place trophy on tiebreaks, but Sudarshan earned the biggest prize: a ticket to the Denker Invitational this August in Vancouver, WA. 

Three of the top four seeds in Middle School attend Kennedy Middle in Cupertino, and predictably, two squared off in the final round.  My longtime student Neel finished strong to clinch his second straight 1st place trophy.  In fact, he became state champion for the fifth time in six years (K-3, 4-5, 4-6 and 6-8 twice).  Actually, nobody has ever won all of the major sections in the long history of this tournament.  Neel and another of my students, 9th grader James Kwok, only need to win 9-12 to achieve this record.

The Elementary section winners both finished with perfect 6-0 scores.  Siddharth went coast-to-coast as the favorite in 4-6, defeating his closest challenger in the final round.  Ben knocked off the top two seeds in 4-5, including one rated nearly 400 points higher.  After winning K-3 as a 1st grader last year, Ben won 4-5 as a 2nd grader!  Way to go!!

The team competition was rather anticlimactic this year.  National power Mission San Jose Elementary easily won all of the Primary and Elementary sections while Mission San Jose High earned a second straight 9-12 title.  See the embedded photos for a few of the victorious kids at MSJE.  Props to Coach Joe Lonsdale for directing such a successful program over so many years!  Unfortunately, one reason for the lack of team competition was a boycott by rival Weibel Elementary.  I find it really sad that certain adults choose to teach their young children the wrong way to resolve their conflicts.

Normally my report would include photos of winners in each section, sometimes from my own camera   Due to ongoing health issues, I could not attend.  Alas, I have only seen one album from Saturday by Richard Shorman, plus a handful of photos from Sunday's awards presentation.  If you can share additional photos, please send them to michael (at) fpawn (dot) com.  Thanks!

February Top 100 Lists

(Left: Yian Liou and Steven Zierk hard at work. Right: Daniel Liu and Jack Zhu pose for the camera.)




Congratulations to the 109 Northern California juniors who are nationally ranked on the February USCF Top 100 lists! We have witnessed a veritable explosion of talent--there were merely 87 ranked kids three years ago, a growth of 25%. Nine stars appear among the top 5, including three well-known #1's: FIDE Masters Tanuj Vasudeva and Daniel Naroditsky plus 9 year old candidate master Samuel Sevian.

Considering that the Bay Area still remains a technology hotspot for the country, it comes as no surprise to see so many of the nation's best young chess players at local tournaments. In fact, the participants of the recent Golden State Open included five #1 ranked juniors and another five at either #2 or #3 (the majority from the Bay Area). Frankly, the explosive growth of scholastic chess over the past decade suggests that the future of our country remains bright.

A few days ago, I uploaded the February CalChess Top 100 and CalChess Top 20 lists to my website. I counted 16 ranked juniors who gained at least 100 rating points in just the past two months. While most big gains came under 1200 (the formula makes it easier to gain points if you're lower rated), two of the most impressive performances were turned in by 12 year old Joshua Cao (1399 to 1665) and 16 year old Thadeus Frei (1790 to 1903). (Photo of Thadeus at right from Dana Mackenzie's interesting chess blog.)

Special kudos to the following nine Bay Area gold medalists for February! How many future Grandmasters or International Masters are there among this exclusive list?

GOLD MEDAL (top 5)
Arun Khemani (#4 age 6)
Rayan Taghizadeh (#3 age 7)
Tanuj Vasudeva (#1 age 8)
Samuel Sevian (#1 age 9)
NM Yian Liou (#2 age 12)
FM Daniel Naroditsky (#1 age 14)
NM Gregory Young (#2 age 14)
NM Steven Zierk (#3 age 16)
IM Sam Shankland (#2 age 18)

Players ranked in the top 10 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)
Cameron Wheeler (#10 age 9)
Vignesh Panchanatham (#11 age 9)
Jack Zhu (#9 age 11)
Kyle Shin (#14 age 12)
NM Rohan Agarwal (#14 age 16)

BRONZE MEDAL (top 25) Leyton Ho, Michael Wang, Kesav Viswanadha, Allan Beilin, Daniel Liu, James Kwok, Taylor McCreary, Samyukta Bhat, Evan Sandberg, Michael Zhong, Adarsh Konda