This weekend, February 28 and March 1, 31 members of the Weibel Chess Team travelled to San Mateo to compete in the Susan Polgar Foundation’s National Open Championships for Boys and Girls. This is the first time this event has been held on the West Coast. We have Chris Torres of the Chess and Music Academy to thank for bringing the Championships to the Bay Area. This was his first venture into running a large major tournament and he did a fine job. Grand Master Susan Polgar and her husband Paul Truong brought their charismatic personalities and helped draw competitors from all over the United Sates and Canada to the event. I admit I was amazed that so many of the Weibel Team players attended as this was not a required event. Most of our top players were there and even without our full teams Weibel Chess proved that our program could compete with the best. Our Teams finished first in the Under 12 Boy’s Division as well as the Under 8 and Under 12 Girl’s Divisions. We lost to Mission San Jose Elementary School in the Under 10 Boy’s Division by a half a point. From my perspective as a coach I think our players in this section deserve loads of accolades as they accomplished this task without our second highest rated player being present and obtained their second place by finishing strong. As many of you have heard me say for years, “our weakness is that our players cannot finish well.” Our Under 10 Boy’s came from a fairly large deficit to almost winning the section. I admit that I tried to bribe them by offering their team members an ice-cream party if they each could win their games in the last round. They came close to succeeding with only one of the players losing his game. The big question is, “Will they be able to do at the CalChess State Championship” against the very powerful Mission San Jose 4-5 Grade team. All I can say is that I am looking forward to dishing out the ice-cream.
Our hero of the two day event was Shivangi Gupta. She tied for first in the Under 12 Girl’s Division. Since the winner of the section would obtain the right to compete in the World Youth Championships there had to be a blitz (fine minute chess) playoff between the top two contenders. Chenyi Zhao, a Warm Springs Elementary School student who is one of the top girls in her age group in the United States with an 1861 rating was her opponent. Shivangi had defeated her in the fourth round. They both had five wins and one loss. Shivangi’s rating is 1397. I stood on a table to capture the blitz game on film. As the time ticked away, Shivangi had a dominating lead and all felt she would get to go to the Youth World Championships. However, in her aggressive speed play Shivangi overlooked a mating pattern Chenyi had created. Shivangi had to settle with a “wait until next year” and a memory that she had defeated Chenyi in their earlier game. 
As I have done in my recent articles I am only going to name the trophy winners in each section. In the Under 8 Boy’s we had our poorest showing. While I hate making excuses like I woulda, I coulda, I shoulda, I am convinced we would have done a lot better if this were a required event for most of the players who had led us to our victories in the Age Level’s six and seven year old sections were not present. This translates to “none of our players came home with trophies.” The Under 8 Girl’s was a different story. Erin Law continuing her recent successes tied for second place, Chau-Ha Nghiem eighth place and Yesun Lee tied for ninth place.
Oliver Wu tied for third place in the Under 10 boys division winning five of his six games. Louis Law and Dharshan Vetrivelan tied for 12th place winning four games each. The Girl’s Under 10 was another Division in which we could have used a few of the Team players who selected not to attend. Please do understand that when I write this I am not saying they should have been there. Out main goals this year are to win our State championship and the all-Girls Nationals. Any victories at the Polgar were a bonus and preparation for those upcoming events. Isha Varada, who I noted in my article on the Age Level surprised me with her success, proved it was no fluke. She took home a ninth place trophy. Prisha Jain tied for 11th.
My special Kudos go to our Under 12 Boy players. After not finishing well at the Grade Level in December they looked a lot better here. Granted they didn’t have to finish well as both the boys and girls teams took insurmountable leads far before the last rounds. Rahul Ravishankar, Sutryateja Mandadi and Aaron Lee tied for 10th place winning four out of their six games. I already mentioned Shivangi Gupta’s, the 2015 CalChess State Girls Champion, success at this event. She had strong back up with Amy Chan’s tie for ninth place and Enya Mistry and Amirah Mohamed Rafi’s tie for 12th place. If they can keep up this level of play and with the addition of the strong play of Anvi Surapaneni, who was not at the Polgar, they will win the Under 12 National Girl’s title for the third year in a row.
A few former Weibel students, now at Horner won trophies in the Under 14 Boys and Girls Division’s. Kia Sadegi tied for 11th and Avi Khanna tied for 18th in the Boy’s. Sara Kaushik tied for fourth and Raisah Khan for seventh. Former Weibel student Aria Lakhmani, now at Basis, took second. I would like to thank her father, Sonny, for making sure I was fed on both Saturday and Sunday.
In closing, let me provide a million thanks to those parents who gave up their weekend to spend both days in San Mateo when it was not required. In some ways this was a first for Weibel parents. Over my 25 years with the Weibel Chess Team I have had a hard time to get parents to travel to tournaments outside the Tri-City Area. I am aware that they have done so reluctantly when the tournament was required as was the CalChess Grade Level in Stockton or the CalChess Girls Championships in San Rafael. Somehow, over the years most parents, not all, candidly seemed to think that taking their children to a remote place like San Mateo was like a trip to Timbuktu. Parents of the 31 players who attended the Polgar did not mutter a word or look as if they put themselves out. They were there to support their children and the Weibel Team. You cannot imagine how good that felt. It may have taken me 25 years, but I think I finally have a large number of Team parents who understand what a commitment to an elite competitive team means. So once again—THANK YOU!
Chess is Forever,Alan
PS: You can find complete results at http://chessandmusic.com/susanpolgarfoundation/
I will shortly process my photographs and post them at my usual site: http://www.CalNorthYouthChess.org/photographs.html
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