This past weekend many members of the club attended the state scholastic championship. A good time was had by most everyone and in between games we had a great time hanging out and meeting several new kids as well as several students of mine who can’t regularly attend club.
The event starts off on Friday night with the state quick championship. This event has a G/8, d3 time control and the rating supplement can be found at: US Chess MSA – Cross Table for PA STATE QUICK CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP (Event 202303172682) . In 3rd place with 4.5 – 1.5 was Igor Khmelnitsky, several time participant in the U.S. Invitational Championship and father of Alec, a regular TD for us. In 5th place was Kevin Li, a former student, who had the best tiebreaks among all of those with 4 points. In 11th place was Vedansh Kumbharathi who attended club for the first time the week before the event and hopefully will be back soon. In 20th place, with the best 2.5 – 3.5 result on tie breaks was Joe Mucerino who occasionally attends our tournaments.
In the Under 1500 section, Kevin Kennedy who often plays in our tournaments, finished second with a 5 – 1 result.
In the Under 1100 section, the Konda siblings, who regularly attend our tournaments, but are busy on Tuesdays, finished 6th (Ratan 4.5 – 1.5) representing Main Line Chess and Games, and 30th (Ratna, 2.5 – 3.5) representing Exton Chess Academy.
Please note that one of the issues the Scholastic Council, led by Leteef Street, will be looking at this coming year is how people are members of clubs.
There were three one day events on Saturday (they are rated and can be found at – US Chess MSA – Cross Table for PA STATE SCHOLASTIC CHAMP SAT (Event 202303182782)). Most of our regular Tuesday night members avoided this section for the K – 6 Under 500 and K – 6 Under 800. A few players who play in our events occasionally participated in this section. Simon Ye (4 – 1 : 4th Place and PA 3rd Grade Co-Champion), Eeshan Kumbharathi (3.5 – 1.5: 9th Place and PA 2nd Grade Co-Champion), Arhan Sheth (2.5 – 2.5: 20th Place) and Jingyi Lu (1.5 – 3.5: 31st Place) all have participated in our events, some recently, some not so recently, but we hope to see them all again soon.
In the K- 6 Under 500, Subbang Nettem, private student and regular club member, finished 3rd (4-1) losing to Aadya Tati for 1st place in the final round. Michael Huang, a student who can’t attend club finished 7th, also 4 -1. Chris Melwyn who attended an event right before states was 3.5 – 1.5 in 14th place and won 2nd place Unrated trophy. Sometime tournament attendees Aanya Kollur and Arul Chintha finished 17th and 20th respectively with 3 – 2 scores, tied with among others, my former student Wen Ma. In 34th place with an even score was private student Venica Jain. In 42nd, 51st, and 54th, all with 2 -3 scores were Inesh A. Sethuraman, Ethan Jiang, and Jaarun Jairath respectively. We also won the 2nd club prize with 10.5 points.
In the K-6 Under 800 section, Hannah Lu, regular club attendee and private student won with a score of 5 – 0. She didn’t need tie breaks, but they would have been great as she beat the players who finished 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th. Achintya Puranikmath, a soon to be student, and Samika Nettem, another private student, both scored 3 -2 to finish 7th and 8th respectively. The three club members were enough to take the 1st club trophy. Ratna Konda, scored 2 – 3. Joseph Durham, scored 1 -4 and won 1st place Under 600. Durham’s rating was actually one point higher than Hannah’s, but a players can one trophy and 1st place in the section, of course, trumps all.
There were 2 Sunday sections, a K – 9 Under 600 (58 players) and a K-9 Under 1100 (35 players). In the K – 9 Under 600, we had 3 of the top 6 finishers. Viraaj Jairath, a private student, tied for first with Yuan Du. Private students Venica Jain and Subhang Nettem both scored 4 – 1 and finished 5th and 6th respectively. Enishk Muruganandam who attends regularly enough that he could have signed up as a member of Tri-Bridges didn’t sign up as one, but finished as top Unrated with a 3.5-1.5 score. Matthew Xie, who played in his first event with us just the other week won 3rd place unrated with 3 points. In 23rd pace was Ethan Jiang with a 3 -2 result. Samika Nettem was even and finished 26th. Ryan Li, a student of mine at Arrowhead Elementary, but never attended a club meeting or tournament, lost to Samika and bested Jaarun Jairath who ended up with 2 points. We won first place in the club category and Pickering Valley Elementary School finished 4th with just 3 players, the Nettems and Jaarun Jairath.
In the Under 1100, Ricky Li who will be attending his first event with us this Friday finished 5th. Sanju Krishnan finished 3 – 2 and won first place girl. Also at 3-2 was Hugo Derval who finished 17th and 2nd place under 700. Ratna won 3rd place under 700. Rithik Rao and Ratan both finished with 1 point in 30th and 34th place respectively. Rithik and Sanju won a 3rd place school trophy for Lionville Middle School.
