595 at 2013 Illinois K-8 Championships

Bloomington-Normal Area Scholastic did their typically wonderful job hosting the 2013 K-8 Championships, held March 9-10 at the Bone Student Center on the Illinois State University campus.

It's tax season, so the congratulations are much briefer than they should be.

Individual results:

• Vincent Do of Thurgood Marshall in Rockford took the Junior High section with a 7-0 score.
• Edward Zhang of Hoffman Estates took the Elementary (grades 4-5) section with 6½-½.
• Aydin Turgut (1852!) of Decatur took the Upper Primary section with 6½-½.
• Aaron Gan of Sprague Half Day in Lincolnshire and David Zimmerman of Monroe Elementary in Hinsdale tied for first in the Lower Primary 6½-½.

Team results:

• Elementary: Grove Elementary, Normal
• Upper Primary, Avery Coonley School, Downers Grove (on tiebreaks over Benjamin Elementary of Bloomington)
• Lower Primary: Monroe Elementary, Hindsale
• Junior High: Thurgood Marshall, Rockford

Hmm, Chicagolanders, the Downstate kids more than held their own...

Chicago Latino Chess Championship XX: How Many Can We Fit in Here?

The 20th annual Chicago Latino Chess Championship is complete, with a record-smashing 93 participants. This year's upper section alone was larger than last year's entire tournament!

Jimi Akintonde of Whitney Young High School swept Section I (age 15 and up), followed by Justin Rajsky with 4.5/5 and Felipe Quiroz, Edward Zhang, Ricardo Román, Phillip Parker-Turner and Mark Jungo with 4.0/5. Parker-Turner and Jungo were so thoroughly tied, by every standard tiebreak measure, that their trophy order had to be decided by a blitz game (which all parties preferred to a coin flip). Parker-Turner prevailed.

In Section II (age 14 and under), Ricky Román of Nightingale School finished first with a perfect 4.0/4, followed by Teja Munagala of Center Grove School in Greenwood, Ind., and Abdel Raoul of the University of Chicago Lab School with 3.5/4. Seven young players followed with final scores of 3.0/4 to win the remaining trophies: Iggy Bielobradek (Komarek, North Riverside), Kaleb Tucker (Beasley), Joseph Buklis (Decatur Classical), Daniel Román (Nightingale), Susan Huang (U. of C. Lab), Daniel Zhang (South Loop) and Elias O'Malley (Decatur Classical).

Ten place trophies were awarded in each section. The tournament is held at the Rudy Lozano Branch Library in Pilsen, home of the Knight Moves Chess Club.

4th grade - another tough section

Alex Yasumoto (1265) won all five games in the 46-player fourth-grade section, winning his game against top seed Shreya Mangalam (1501) in the fourth round.  Shreya tied with Emmett Madigan, David Wallach, Aayan Patel, Edward Zhang, Jason Li for second with 4 points. Alan Wang, Shashank Hirani, Ryan Wong each scored 3½-1½.

In several of these sections, I'm seeing some pretty good players who are not among the top finishers....

Again, here are the MSA crosstable on the USCF site and the organizers' results on PlyCount

.