Supernationals 2013

Once every four years, all of USCF's scholastic national individual & team championships (high school, junior high, elementary) are held simultaneously in Nashville: this was the weekend for "Supernationals."

Results are in, says Chess Life Online.  And Illinois students did more than OK.

Congratulations to two National Champions from Illinois!!

Aydin Turgut of Decatur took the K-3 Championship with a perfect 7-0.

David Peng won the K-6 Championship with an undefeated 6½-½ score.

I was renewing library books at Harold Washington yesterday when I ran into Phillip Turner, father of Whitney Young's Philip Parker-Turner, who was kind enough to send the below picture of the Whitney Young team (here collecting hardware at the MVP tournament).  Whitney Young did more than OK, finishing in a tie for 5th-7th with 18 points, only 2½ points behind the winners.  Sam Schmakel tied for 2nd in the individual championship (7th on tiebreaks) with a 6-1 score, losing only to tournament winner Atulya Shetti of Michigan.

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...

Miranda Liu wins Grade 4-5 Title

Congratulations to Miranda, who had a result that most adults would be delighted with: her 6½-½ score included three wins and a draw against Class B players in the last four rounds!  Vincent Do, Nikhil Kalghatgi, Hanson Hao, Akhil Kalghtgi, Chetan Reddy, Jonathan Tan

Daniel Parmet directed for Bubbacat Chess, assisted by James Aman.

Crosstable here: 183 players in this section, including some very strong young players!  5 points was a very impressive score in this section....

All Grade results (Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, & 3rd)

Unofficial nose count was 505 players!

Kindergarten: Nikolai Rhodes scored a perfect 5-0; Huaye Jeffrey Lin took second with 4-1.

1st Grade: William Zhu swept the field 5-0; Ivan Mitkov, Aydin Turgut, and Noah Greenberg tied for second, again with 4-1.

In the 50-player 2nd Grade section, Jason Daniels and David Wallach tied for first with 5-0; Ricky Wang, Vishal Chandrasekar, Shreya Mangalam, Owen Power, Christopher Gora, and Stevan Kamatovic tied for third with 4-1.

Vincent Do (USCF rating of 1643!) won the 69-player 3rd Grade section with a perfect 5-0.  Nathaniel Sobery took clear second with an undefeated 4½-½.  Harrison He, Ranadheer Tripuranaeni, Eric Gan, Henry Curcio, Ishaar Ganesan, Allan Lopez, Ezra Boldizsar, Christopher Yang, and Brian Suganraj tied for third with 4-1

Tamara Golovey knows a little bit about teaching chess:

she was the first teacher of Boris Gelfand, who just led Israel to a 2010 Olympiad bronze

The younger players played in the school library

Deep study of the initial position pays dividends