I am waiting for my plane to leave Dallas. I thought I might as well get a report out to
the Weibel Chess parents or at least that one person sitting on the edge of his
chair waiting for this information. ;-)
The Weibel news is mixed.
The good (almost great news) is that all but one person wore their
Weibel Team T-shirts all weekend. It
helped the players and parents bond as a team.
Our spirit was high even if our scores weren’t as high as we would have
liked. I was excited to see our elite
players take pride in their jackets.
They wore them during most of the rounds.
On the positive side:
I was happy that I invited Gomes (Fremont) and Bret Harte (Modesto)
to share our large Team Room. We felt a
brotherhood/sisterhood of being from Northern California. Success and accomplishment come not just from
trophies, but from being a part of a community.
Demetrius Goins, our coach, amazed people in his staying
power. He had few breaks during the day as he threw all his energy and
extensive chess knowledge in preparing our players and some of the Gomes
players for their next games.
There were few negatives.
One impacted our team and caused some unwanted tension and lack of sleep. Almost all flights were cancelled Thursday due
to thunderstorms, hail and tornados in Dallas.
Flight had to be rearranged to get to Dallas. A number of our players
had to take byes the first round for fear of not arriving in time on their
re-booked flights. Anthony Zhou, our
highest rated player, decided to gamble and try and make the hour deadline
before being forfeited. He made it with
about five minutes to spare and went on to win his game.
Almost everything went smoothly at the tournament. The Chief TD , however, apparently made a
decision based upon his philosophy that reversed two years of a peace that had
occurred between many teams and Washington State players. Washington State has its own rating
system. When Washington State players
enter a Nationals their USCF ratings are quite deceptive. Some feel that is intentional. For example, a Washington team in the K3 Under
800 section had players rated by their system over 1700 and others 1500 and
1300 and they had played dozens of competition chess games. Their USCF ratings were way under 800 due to
having played these games years ago. The
Chief TD informed the large group of protesters that as far as he was concerned
all non-USCF rating system and activities were illegal. Obviously, this was a business power ploy on
his part that lacked any ethical considerations. He had, in my opinion, absolutely no concern
for the players. I loved watching my
brethren and sisters from New York come down on the Chief TD whom they viewed as
arrogant. I personally felt he was just
a snot. Obviously, it isn’t just in Northern
California that we have one or two people who use their power and status for
their own purposes disregarding the players.
How went the tournament for Weibel? I was excited that all our players were taking
their time before moving. Only once or
twice did a player return from his/her
game in under 20 minutes. A few years
ago a dozen players would have been back in the Team room in that amount of
time. Many of our players went three hours
and a couple even lasted almost to the end of the time control. Shivangi Gupta seemed to do this in almost
every round. She, like a number of other
Weibel players, found themselves playing higher rated players in every
round. I do want to provide my special
kudos to second grade student Dharsahan Vetrivelan as he used his full time
during one of his games.
Another second grade student who deserves Kudos is Aaron Hu.
He played a slew of people 400 to 500 points higher and finished the tournament
with 5 out of seven points in the K-3 championships. He was by far the big surprise of the
tournament and deserved his trophy and loads of accolades.
Anvi Surapaneni was the heroine of the team as she won the
K-6 Under 1000 competition with a perfect score. While winners of any of the Under or
non-rated sections cannot use the title Champion, I would definitely call her a
champion even if I must use a small c.
In the K-6 Under 1000 competition Sashrika Pandey also came
home with a trophy for her five wins.
Our Team took third in this section only a ½ point out of first. We had 20 points and the first place team had
20.5 points.
I believe in this year’s National Championships our players
confronted their most difficult competition ever. They did far better than last year, however. We failed to come home with many individual
trophies, but our teams picked up a few.
In fact, only the players I have already mentioned and Oliver Wu in the
K-3 section brought home any hardware.
The Weibel Team results:
Based on the initial rankings of the teams in the sections
we entered our final results were good.
Translation—we placed higher than we entered. Yet, I had hoped we would do better. The K-3 Championships provided our best
chance for a title. Through most of the
rounds seven teams including Weibel were within one point of first place. In the sixth round Mission San Jose took its
turn in first by half a point and held on to its lead in the seventh to gain
the victory. Once again Mission has proven that their players can finish
strong. Weibel placed fourth only one
and a half point behind. As expected, Oliver
Wu led our players and finished with 5.5 points. As noted earlier, Aaron Hu with a rating 600
points below Oliver was our second place player. In the last round Louis Law fought a player
rated much higher than himself to a draw and obtained 4.5 points. The four highest scoring players count for
team point no matter how many players on a team. If a team finishes in the top five the four
players get plaques. Our final plaque
was awarded to Vincent Wang who obtained 3.5 points.
Despite our K-5 Championship Team being seeded eleventh in
the country, I truly felt that we had the talent to finish in the top five. We had
no heroes but we had a lot of depth. Through most of the tournament, we were in
the top five. The bane of Weibel Chess’
existence in recent years, not finishing strong, raised its ugly face again when
we dropped our position in the last two rounds and ended tied for ninth
place. To be fair our players defeated a
number of higher rated players, just not enough of them. While there were not any plaques for our K-5
players, I would like to personally thank all of them for their team
spirit. I think this group enjoyed
themselves a lot. I am sure some might
say too much, but I can’t help but get a warm feeling when a group of students
are laughing together while playing chess in the Team Room. They were like
comrades in arms. Next year, I hope the
comrades in arms hit the target more directly.
Our highest rated play Atri Surapaneni (1496) obtained the most points—4.5. Prithvi Nagamanivel (1163), showed he could
still play chess as he did in second grade. He destroyed many higher rated
players and received 4 points. I think
the tension in the delayed flights and Jeremy Chen’s (1423) lack of sleep hit him more
than any other Weibel player. We were
all incredulous when he lost his first three games. With the help of Demetrius Goins, our onsite
coach, he made a comeback winning the next four games. Enya Mistry, another of our players that can play
three to four hour games, added 3.5 points to our team. Suryateja Mandadi and
Rahul Ravishankar also had 3.5 points in the K-5 tournament.
We tied for fourth in the K-6 Championships. This was a respectable finish. Yet once again we would have been higher if
our players had better conditioning to finish off the tournament as strong as
they started. The Nationals are grueling
event with seven four hour games in three days.
There is little doubt in my mind that our elite players and even varsity
players need to play longer time controls over two or three days. Most of all
they need to attend more tournaments. Every coach wants to put his sport
first. I just hope I can get some of the
parents to do this. In no other sport do
the controlled studies show the academic improvement that studying and playing
chess does. I hear all these worries
about studying for tests and test scores.
Yet, critical thinking developed through chess is a prime mover in
education. Having sat on college
admissions committees and speaking from the experience of my own boys, becoming
a standout chess player will get more attention from most college selection
committees than the scores your child received on any Star test. Our two top players, Anthony Zhou (1842)
and Serafina Show (1590) both brought 4.5 points to the team score. Shivangi Gupta who I moved up from fifth
grade due to her fighting spirit obtained 3.5 points as did Daniel Emmanuel.
They all received plaques for their accomplishment.
Fremont’s Gomes Elementary was the winner of the K-6
Championship group. They had been last
year’s National K-5 Champions.. Weibel was
happy once again to share our Team Room with the Gomes players. I hold a special
place in my heart for Gomes since it was the second school I taught at. I left
Gomes when I turned Success Chess over to Bela Evans. Gomes, in the years I was there, mirrored
Weibel. They had great students who were
a pleasure to work with plus loads of parent volunteers. I even held tournaments there and felt as
much thrill when they won State Championships as I did when Weibel came out on
top. I may have left Gomes in 2005, but
my ties remained. Gomes’ number one
player, National Expert Joanna Liu (2016) started her chess during her three
years at Weibel. She was one of the best
students I ever had and telling her parents this inspired them to continue her
in chess. Gomes fourth player in their
K-6 Championship Team is William Sartorio (1603-now close to 1800) who played
and interacted with our coaches at Weibel for two years. I felt
honored (I had tears in my eyes) when the Gomes parents asked me to be in a
picture with their Team. The other two
outstanding players who were part, not only of Gomes’ National Championship
team this year, but last year’s as well, were fourth grader Jason Shuhe (1708)
and sixth grader Ganesh Murugappan (1835).
KUDOS!
We did not have a team in the K-1 Championship section, but
I hope to have one next year. Erin Law
was the lone player in that section this year.
I want to finish this article on Weibel at the 2014
Elementary School Nationals with a bit of information on other Northern
California winners. Balagi Daggupati , a
student of Ted Castro and his famous NorCal House of Chess, stood alone in
first place in the K-3 National Championships.
Northern California has the most amazing group of third grade chess
players ever. Seven of the first 15
positions were held by our players: Balaji Daggupati (1919) in first; Maiti
Milind (1836) and Andrew Peng (1775) tied for second; Callaghan McCarty-Snead,
Chingun Bayaraa (1778), Rishith Susarla (1701) and Oliver Wu(1713) tied for seventh. In K-5 David Pan (1839) tied for second. In K-6, third grade student Andrew Zhang Hong
(2038) tied for fifth along with Joanna Liu(2016) and Jason Shuhe Zhang
(1708). This was a great year for Northern
California players. They continue to
show that they are once again a force to be reckoned with.
I will get some photos posted in the near future.
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