Monday, October 31, 2011

WEIBEL CHESS TEAM MESSAGE FROM DR. KIRSHNER

ALL:
We will have chess this Friday, November 4 at the normal time--starting ay 2:50 until 5:30 PM.  We always have chess on minimal days.  We only miss chess on the days Weibel is closed.  This means no school on November 11-Veterans Day  & no school November 25-Thanksgiving break.  It is really really important you do come on November 4 as we must prepare for the required CalChess State Grade Level, December 3 and 4.  We are trying to set up some special training sessions for the Thanksgiving break for those who will still be here.

Grades K-3 play ONLY on Sunday, December 4.  Yes, that is a change from previous years when K-3 played only on Saturday.  I have no idea why the change.  The good news is that we no longer have to drive to Stockton.  The tournament will be at the Santa Clara Convention Center <note from editor:  offically at the Hyatt Regency Hotel which is next door to the Santa Clara Convention Center>

I will be sending at a short summary of what occurred at the Junior Congress this weekend that for those who ATTENDED WE ARE RECOVERING FROM.  I have made two decisions this weekend that I hope will help us to do better at the Grade Level this year. ONE--I have agreed to have a special Weibel program within Chess Magnet School.  This will be free to ALL Weibel students.  If it works out the first month, I will cover the cost from your tuition to continue for the year. SECOND--For the rest of this month I am going to allow anyone over 800 and under 1200 in k-4 to attend Demetrius' preparation for the Nationals class on Tuesdays(no cost).  If the group is too large I will bring someone else in.  Sri will be calling all those who qualify soon.

US Junior Chess Congress results

Team member results are posted below.  Weibel wound up 2nd in the 6-7 age group and third in 8-9 and 10-11.  No spectacular results, but for those that played, this is a great warmup and indication for the State Grade Level Championships coming up 5 weeks from now and to build from here.  Two consecutive days playing in a cooped up environment with a long walk to everywhere is very tiring for everyone, so hopefully this will give an idea on how to pace your kids for the Grade Levels.

14-15 (6 rounds)
Kevin Moy ^ 4.0

12-13 (6 rouuds)
Angela Chan 3.0
Nikhil Jaha 2.5
Rohan Koka 2.5

10-11 (6 rounds)
Steven Li 4.0
Geeta Shankar 3.5
Anthony Zhou ^ 3.0
Sharon Lu 3.0
Abhishek Handigol 3.0
Alisha Chawla 3.0
Kia Sadeghi 2.5
Sara Kaushik 2.0

8-9 (6 rounds)
Atri Surapaneni 4.0
Serafina Show 4.0
Surya Teja Mandadi 3.5
Aditya Tadimeti 3.0
Anvi Surapaneni 3.0
Shivangi Gupta 2.5
Aria Lakhmani 2.5
Prithvi Nagamanivel 2.0

6-7 (5 rounds)
Ryan Song 3.5
Maurya Palusa ^ 3.5
Louis Law 3.0
Amy Chan 3.0
Jake Stasi 3.0
Oliver Wu 3.0
Suyash Lakhmani 2.5
Aayush Shah 2.5
Gabriella Currie 1.5
Aileen Zheng 0.5

5 (5 rounds)
Maurya Palusa 3.0

^ - moved up out of their age group into a higher age group

Individual Final Standings
Team Standings
USCF Ratings Report

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

US Junior Chess Congress National Tournament

kids




The USCF Junior Chess Congress Nationals tournament is coming to the Bay Area the weekend of October 28-30 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara.  This is open to all people 18 years and under, and the tournament sections are divided up into age groups.  The birthdate is determined by the kid's birthdate as of October 29, 2011.

Here is the schedule of events:

10/28 - Blitz 6:30pm-8:30pm
10/29 - 5 and Under play 5 games, G/30, 9am first game
10/29 and 10/30 - 8/9, 10/11, 12/13, 14/15, and 16 to 18 sections play 3 games each day, G/75, 9am first game
10/29 - Bughouse 6:30-8:30pm
10/30 - 6/7 section plays, 5 games, G/30, 9am first game

Early Registration is through October 20

Flyer:  http://www.bayareachess.com/events/11/usjr11.pdf
Online Registration:  https://bayareachess.com/my/special.php?membertype=1111_usjr
Advanced Entries:  https://bayareachess.com/events/11/usjrcong.php

Weibel Quads results

I'm a bit late on this, but results are now rated.  They didn't quite come out very pretty but hopefully Dr. Kirshner will have the actual Quads pairings and results on the CalNorthYouthChess website shortly.

Exactly 60% of the Weibel Team, 48 out of the 80 players on the Team, plus numerous Weibel Club players, played in this tournament.
Kudos to the following team members with perfect 3.0 scores (and big rating gains I may add):

Kory Hui
Rokas Dargis
Jaden Wei
Tanabh Mishra
Jeremy Chen
Louis Law
Amirah Rafi
Eshaan Mistry

USCF Ratings here

The 2nd of the Grand Prix Weibel Quads series is on Saturday November 19.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Weibel Quads - Grand Prix #1

The first of three tournaments of our annual Weibel Quads Grand Prix will be held this Saturday, October 15 in the MUR at Weibel Elementary.  These Quads are special because since there usually are a lot of players in the tournament (anticipated 150 players), the players in each Quad will generally all have a very similar rating to each other, with a variance of usually no more than 50 points).  Also, for players who are unrated, this particular Quad is a good place to start since there will be plenty of other players playing in a tournament for the first time as well, and the unrateds will generally get paired up with one another.  Online early registration ends Thursday night.

Online Flyer:  http://www.calnorthyouthchess.org/Applications/FallQuads11-GP/
Online Registration:  https://calnorthyouth.powweb.com/Applications/FallQuads11-GP/CCEntries.html
Advanced Entries: http://www.calnorthyouthchess.org/Applications/FallQuads11-GP/ENTRIES.html

The other two tournaments as part of the Grand Prix will be on November 19 and December 10.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

USCF October 2011 Top 100 list

The October lists are finally out, almost a month late.  The Top 100 lists are based on October supplement, i.e. end of August ratings.  Ages are based on birthdate as of August 31.  Weibel had a number of players who just missed out being in the Top 100.

Listing here:  http://main.uschess.org/component/option,com_top_players/Itemid,638/

Age 7 Austin Li - #59 - 1153 **
Age 8 Anthony Zhou - #12 - 1554
Age 9 Michael Wang - #5 - 1921
Age 10 Abhishek Handigol #60 - 1612 **
Age 11 Kevin Moy - #22 - 1912
Age 12 Justin Wang - 12 - #74 - 1734 *
Girls Under Age 13 - Sharon Lu - #54 - 1474

* - Horner JHS student
** - Weibel team member but not eligible to play for Weibel

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Monday, October 3, 2011

some pics from the G/60



Michael W. and Kevin M., two of Weibel's superstar players
Daniel H., a national champion!, along with Kory H.


Alisha is all smiles for now
Geeta and Desiree, hiding her face
Sharon L. at work


Welcome Back!  Steven

USCF G/30 Nationals results

The USCF G/30 Nationals took place on Sunday at the same location as the G/60 Nationals the day before, at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara. Since the G/30 is more or less considered to be a scholastic-type of time control, it stood to reason that many more kids would show up for the U1000 scholastic portion of the event rather than the regular event. As such, the regular over-1000 portion of the tournament moved back to the upstairs ballroom of the Hyatt as opposed to being in the Convention Center as it was on Saturday. This was a 5 round tournament, but even with the extra round, with the shorter time control, the event lasted 2 hours shorter than the day before - no doubt to the delight of the legions of parents hording around at the tournament.

Most of the Weibel team participants played in the U1000 portion of the tournament. This makes sense since we generally encourage the Weibel kids rated over 1000 to play in longer time control tournaments. There's a lot of work to be done for most, but a couple of good results did come out of this. I am glad though that so many did come out in the 2 days for this event. A Swiss tournament, especially a tournament with lots of players in a section, will always be a much better gauge of the strength of the player. This is valuable for the Weibel coaches to judge where the improvement needs to come from. The Weibel team overall did win first place in the U1000 section.

Results for Weibel instructors and team members (perfect score 5.0):

Open:
Francisco Anchodo - 3.0
Uyanga Byambaa - 2.0

U1800
Steven Li - 1.5

U1400
Kia Sadeghi - 1.5

U1000
7th grader Rohan Koka - 4.0 - won the 8th place trophy
3rd grader Aditya Tadimeti - 3.5
3rd grader Atri Surapaneni - 3.0
3rd grader Anvi Surapaneni - 3.0
3rd grader Jaden Wei - 2.5
4th grader Sashrika Pandey - 2.0
1st grader Louis Law - 1.5
3rd grader Kevin Zhu - 1.5
3rd grader Surya Teja Mandadi - 0.0

U600
3rd grader Enya Mistry - 3.5 - won the 21st place trophy
3rd grader Pranav Ramesh - 3.0
3rd grader Amirah Rafi - 3.0
4th grader Aria Lakhmani - 3.0
3rd grader Privthi Nagamanivel - 2.0
1st grader Suyash Lahkmani - 2.0
1st grader Aileen Zheng - 2.0
1st grader Eshaan Mistry - 1.5
4th grader Avi Khanna - 1.5
3rd grader Rahul Ravishankar - 1.0
 
 
 

Sunday, October 2, 2011

USCF G/60 Nationals results

A very large turnout came out for the USCF G/60 Nationals tournament, the first USCF Nationals tournament in the Bay Area in many years.  A total of 204 players played in 3 sections, Open (1800+), U1800, and U1400 for a total of 4 rounds. In addition, another 110 players played in 2 sections (U1000, U600) in a separate ballroom for the scholastic version of this event. This will be first of 4 national tournaments scheduled over the next 5 months, and hopefully more will be coming next year. 

The event was held at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara.  Quite frankly, wth the larger than anticipated turnout, I was a bit fearful that the tournament would turn out like the scholastic State championship next door at the Santa Clara Convention Center 5 months back, where everyone was packed in like sardines.  But the room setting in the ballroom was very spacious and well set up, with the top boards in the Open section off to the farthest quietest side of the ballroom. The tables were of the extra long 8 foot variety, with 4 players to a table.

Thanks to all from the Weibel team and former team members who made the trek down to Santa Clara to participate in the event.  You are a big part of what made the event very successful.  There will be a separate blog item for the G/30 event which will be held today October 2.

Weibel instructor and student participants in the G/60 and their results:

Open:
IM Ricardo De Guzman (2493) 3.5 - won $183.67 for finishing in a tie for 2nd
Michael Wang (1909) 3.0  - won $63.33 for finishing in a tie for 3rd
Kevin Moy (1969) 1.5
Justin Wang (1750) 1.5

U1800
Daniel Ho (1745) 4.0 - perfect score, won $500 for finishing in a tie for 1st place and is declared a national champion!
Anthony Zhou (1643) 2.0
Abhishek Handigol (1612) 2.0
Kory Hui (1541) 2.0
Steven Li (1423) 2.0
Alisha Chawla (1361) 0.5

U1400
Calvin Tam (1342) 3.0 - won $21 for finishing in a tie for 3rd
Amarinder Chahal (1270) 3.0 - won $21 for finishing in a tie for 3rd
Sharon Lu (1471) 2.5
Geeta Shankar (984) 1.5
Desiree Ho (1253) 0.0

In addition, there was also a scholastic version of the G/60 event for players with a rating of under 1000. There were 110 total players particpating in this event.  The Weibel Team won both the U600 and U1000 sections.

U1000
3rd grader Atri Surapaneni (1064) - 3.5 - tied for 1st and won the 5th place trophy on tiebreaks
5th grader Sara Kaushik (912) - 3.0 - tied for 7th and won the 8th place trophy
Kindergartener Maurya Palusa (1002) - 2.0
5th grader Akshay Gharpure (825) 2.0
3rd grader Surya Teja Mandadi (816) 2.0
7th grader Rohan Koka (902) 2.0
1st grader Louis Law (672) 1.5
3rd grader Anvi Surapeneni (731) 1.0
3rd grader Jaden Wei (874) 1.0
2nd grader Ryan Song (688) 1.0

U600
3rd grader Privthi Nagamanivel (434) 3.0 - tied for 4th place and won the 7th place trophy on tiebreaks
4th grader Vittal Thirumalai (249) 3.0 - tied for 4th place and won the 11th place trophy
1st grader Oliver Wu (594) 3.0 - tied for 4th place and won the 12th place trophy
1st grader Vincent Wang (466) 3.0 - tied for 4th place and won the 15th place trophy
3rd grader Amirah Rafi (577) 2.0 - tied for 19th place and won the 29th place trophy
3rd grader Rahul Ravishankar (460) 1.5