National Elementary in Nashville!

The spacious interior of the Gaylord Opryland Resort.

The largest chess tournament in America starts today at the humongous Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville.  No, it is not World Open, but rather the National Elementary Championships.  Over 2,200 players have registered in one of nine sections based on age and rating. 

A total of 47 NorCal kids (plus their parents, siblings and coaches) flew to Nashville for a wild weekend of chess and fun.  About three-fourths of this grand delegation represents two elementary schools from the city of Fremont.  The roster ranges from two 6th grade experts, Vignesh Panchanatham (2127) and Kevin Moy (2015), all the way down to a pair of kindergartners.  Almost all of the Bay Area players entered in the highly competitive "open" sections, meaning no rating restriction.

Stage with trophies lined up in back.

The format is a 7-round swiss with two games today, three on Saturday and the final two on Sunday.  The time control is G/2 hours, meaning someone could potentially play for 12 hours on Saturday.  I will try to follow the top players on my blog at least once a day, which will be challenging given the ongoing US Championship and the World Championship (Anand vs Gelfand).

Update on Friday evening:  By my count, 13 NorCal juniors finished the first day with a perfect score of 2-0.  The three stars in K-6 (Vignesh, Kevin and Michael Wang) all remain in contention for a possible national title! 

Update on Saturday morning:  Most of the top players are still perfect, but that will change as Vignesh is paired against Michael W. in K-6.  CalChess champion MSJE team demonstrates balance across all sections, holding on to three different top-4.

Northern California Watch List
(round 3 of 7)
Click here for standings and pairings.

K-6 Championship

• Vignesh Panchanatham 3.0 (paired against Michael W.)
• Kevin Moy 3.0
• Michael Wang 3.0 (paired against Vignesh)
• Abhishek Handigol 2.5
• Alvin Kong 2.5
• Anthony Zhou 2.0
• Shalin Shah 2.0
• Eric Zhu 2.0
• MSJE team in 4th place

K-5 Championship

• Amit Sant 3.0
• Anjan Das 2.0
• Drake Lin 1.5
• MSJE team in 10th place

K-3 Championship

• Ben Rood 3.0 (playing on board 1)
• Daniel Mendelevitch 2.0
• John Chan 2.0
• Chenyi Zhao 2.0
• Jason Zhang 2.0
• Luke Zhao 2.0
• Soorya Kuppam 2.0
• Mihir Bhuptani 2.0
• Tommy Koh 2.0
• MSJE team in 3rd place

K-1 Championship

• Rishith Susarla 3.0
  
• Agnes William 3.0
• Oliver Wu 3.0
• Milind Maiti 2.0
• Balaji Daggupati 2.0
• Louis Law 2.0
• Zhiyi Wang 2.0
• MSJE team in 2nd place

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!

October Top 100 Lists

Udit Iyengar and Cameron Wheeler

I cannot believe that a full year has passed since my last report on the CalChess juniors ranked among the national Top 100 in each age. Alas, my previous blog post was indeed October 2010. My apologies! Without further ado, here are the PDF links everyone has patiently waited for.

• CalChess Top Age Lists
• CalChess Top 20 Lists

A total of 111 local students earned national recognition for their age, actually 2 less than a year ago. Another 8 girls appeared on the girls-only rankings. The most populous age groups were 11 years old (17 ranked, including 5 of the top 17) and 7 & under (15 ranked, including 5 age 6 and 2 age 5). No doubt this is a credit to the numerous school programs, concentrated in the South Bay.

The CalChess Top 20 lists keep growing stronger each month, despite the June graduation of four of the best high school players. Like last year, 16 kids are rated over 2000 USCF, a number already guaranteed to increase on the December supplement. Even more stunning is that 9 of 11 experts (2000-2199) are in middle school! Specifically, watch out for Kennedy Middle School at nationals, with top four players all currently rated above 2100 on MSA! (That's stronger than most high schools.) Finally, don't forget America's youngest master of all time, NM Samuel Sevian, who less than a year later is knocking on the door to 2300.

Ben Rood

In previous posts about the USCF Top 100 Lists, I created an unofficial medal system to honor the most talented CalChess juniors. Of course, those ranked #1 deserve an extra special mention. 15-year old IM Daniel Naroditsky falls somewhere between Superman and a 600 lb gorilla, considering that he has been at the top for some six years straight. On the other hand, 7-year old Ben Rood is the new kid on the block, winning both the CalChess 1-3 Championship and National K-1 Championship this year on the way to an impressive 1731 rating. Lastly, Chinguun Bayaraa starts off as the highest rated 5-year old in the country! Way to go Danya, Ben and Chinguun!

While only three #1s live in the Bay Area, there still are many star juniors. In fact, someone represents the Top 6 on every age list save two. (The exceptions are 13 and 17 years old.) Moreover, I counted two #2s and three #3s, all but one who reached the top before. With these statistics out of the way, let me announce the gold, silver and bronze medal winners! 14 gold, 17 silver and 9 bronze! (My students appear in bold and italics.)

IM Daniel Naroditsky

GOLD MEDAL (top 6)
Chinguun Bayaraa (#1 age 5)
Agnes William (#2 age 5)
Rishith Susarla (#4 age 6)
Ben Rood (#1 age 7)
Josiah Stearman (#6 age 8)
Michael Wang (#5 age 9)
Rayan Taghizadeh (#6 age 9)
NM Samuel Sevian (#2 age 10)
Cameron Wheeler (#3 age 11)
Jack Zhu (#6 age 12)
NM Yian Liou (#3 age 14)
IM Daniel Naroditsky (#1 age 15)
NM Gregory Young (#2 age 16)
IM Steven Zierk (#3 age 18)

SILVER MEDAL (top 17)
Solomon Ge (#9 age 8)
Anthony Zhou (#12 age 8)
Leyton Ho (#10 age 9)
Jeffrey Tao (#12 age 10)
FM Tanuj Vasudeva (#15 age 10)
Udit Iyengar (#7 age 11)
Vignesh Panchanatham (#11 age 11)
Colin Chow (#14 age 11)

IM Steven Zierk

Siddharth Banik (#17 age 11)
Kesav Viswanadha (#8 age 12)
Allan Beilin (#12 age 12)
Daniel Liu (#10 age 13)
Kyle Shin (#15 age 13)
Neel Apte (#16 age 13)
Paul Richter (#17 age 13)
Taylor McCreary (#17 GirlsU16)
NM Evan Sandberg (#15 age 18)

BRONZE MEDAL (top 30)
Zarek Azam (#21 age 7&under)
Jason Zhang (#23 age 7&under)
Arhant Katare (#28 age 9)
Kevin Moy (#22 age 11
Richard Yi (#24 age 11)
Art Zhao (#28 age 11)
James Kwok (#29 age 14)
NM Hayk Manvelyan (#20 age 17)
NM Rohan Agarwal (#19 age 18)