FULL REPORT ON THE WEIBEL CHESS TEAMS AT THE CALCHESS STATE SCHOLASTICS, 2015

                  As most of you know Weibel Chess took a three year hiatus from the CalChess State Scholastic.  We returned this year with a big splash. This event has been the largest and most prestigious of the California youth chess tournaments since its founding 40 years ago.  Two times the competition, that includes numerous divisions besides the championship, drew as many as 1400 participants when you include the side events like the Blitz and Bughouse.  The numbers have dropped in recent years but have begun to climb again in part, to be candid, with the 109 players Weibel sent.  This years total reached 915.  The present organizer, Judit Sztaray, in her first year doing the event really went all out to produce an efficient and fair competition.  Sadly, what she failed to account for was how much more difficult it is to run an event as it grows. Simply 100 more entries means 100% more problems.  She and her staff did their best to try to resolve all the issues.   Some of her new ideas as the sending each parent via e-mail his/her child’s pairing helped relieve some of the crowding around the postings before each round.   I know many of you were upset to sit through three hours of awards presentations and learn that they did not have your child’s trophies.  Trophies were promised to the top 40 players and they only had enough for the top 20.  A whole section of trophies never showed up and a few section awards disappeared.  I am sure, knowing Judit, she will get those trophies to our players and those from other schools promptly. 

I will use the trophy awards as a lead in to my discussion as to the amazing success of the Weibel Teams in the lower sections of the tournament as well as the minor successes of our Teams in the Championship sections.  I can proudly say that there is a reason we are well known in California as the most successful school chess program.  Of course, I give that credit to our great instructors and also the numerous private coaches and programs we have in Fremont.  Weibel students helped NorCal House of Chess and Shoreview Chess win numerous first places in this year’s non-academic Club Team awards.  This year players could compete on both School and Club Teams.  A few of our students are also actively engaged in learning programs through Royal Chess and the Wei Liu Academy.  We may not have produced the top players this year, but we certainly had the most depth of solid chess students.    The vast majority of players at the State Championships are not in the Varsity Division.  Weibel Chess and its students were the talk of the tournament.  Numerous people came up to me to ask me how they could join our program.  I had to explain that Weibel Chess is open almost exclusively to students who attend Weibel.  While I do not allow students from other schools to participate in the Weibel Club classes on Tuesday’s, I do allow a few students, who can get to Weibel  by 3PM on Friday’s, to join us in our classes and tournament style play.  The present number of out of school players is seven with our Team having 102 members. 

            As I noted earlier, our weakest divisions were our Varsity/Championship Sections.  Mission San Jose Elementary School came in seeded first in the K-3, K-5 and K-6 sections with at least one player higher than our best in each group.   I had hoped our players would be able to take out one or two of their best to enable us to win in two if not all the Championship divisions, however we were not successful.  Mission San Jose proved superior in the K-3, K-5 and K-6 division. We could take some solace in taking a first in the Kindergarten division.  I am hoping this proves well for our future in this division.  We took second in the other three.  We placed behind MSJE by 1.5 points in both the K-3 and K-5 divisions and a ½ point in the K-6 divisions.  

    WEIBEL’S TROPHY WINNERS IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP SECTIONS:
Kindergarten—
Ekansh Samanta tied for 3rd

Edward Miu tied for 12th
Akarsh Khare tied for 12th  
Farhan Ali tied for 12th
Mai-Ha Nghiem tied for 33rd
Ethan Wu tied for 33rd
Krishank Sardesi tied for 33rd

K-3 Championship—
Aaron Hu tied for 8th
Dharshan Vetrivelan tied for 8th
Erin Law tied for 8th
Umesh Gopi tied for 19th
Weslie Chen tied for 19th
Prisha Jain tied for 26th

K-5 Championship—
Oliver Wu tied for 3rd
Aaron Lee tied for 5th
Zayaan Khan tied for 11th
Stanley Ko tied for 11th
Louis Law tied for 11th
Sidarth Raman tied for 11th
Sumukh Murthy tied for 21st

K-6 Championship—
Shivangi Gupta tied for 7th

Jeremey Chen tied for 7th
Enya Mistry tied for 7th
Atri Surapaneni tied for 7th
Anvi Surapaneni tied for 7th
Prithvi Nagamanivel tied for 14th
Rahul Ravishankar tied for 19th

    In the non-Championship sections Weibel won the K-3 Beginner, the K-3 Junior Varsity, the K-6 Beginner and the K-6 Junior Varsity.  We lost the K-3 Unrated and only had one player in the K-6 Unrated which does not count as a Team. 

K-3 Unrated—
Anika Jain tied for 26th

K-3 Beginner—
Kavya Shree Peela tied for 5th
Yesun Lee tied for 5th
Avyukt Bhardwaj tied for 16th
David Gao tied for 28th
Mihika Deshpande tied for 28th
Marcus Chan tied for 28th
Srijan Kakkera tied for 28th
Elena Xu tied for 28th

K-3 Junior Varsity—
Chau-Ha Nghiem tied for 2nd
Rutansh Pathak tied for 16th
Isha Varada tied for 16th
Vincent Yang tied for 16th

K-6 Unrated—
Ananya Kulshrestha tied for 5th


K-6 Beginner—
Irene Xu –FIRST PLACE TROPHY!
Chloe Chan tied for 3rd
Jieun Lim tied for 3rd
Navish Sinha tied for 9th
Prabhav Vishist tied for 18th

K-6 Junior Varsity—
Tanabh Mishra—tied for 3rd
Tanvi Deshpande—tied for 3rd
Jason Tse—tied for 3rd
Jongwon Lee—tied for 3rd
Mithil Srugarapu—tied for 16th
Arhan Chaudhary—tied for 19th
Surya Somasundaram—tied for 19th
Kripi Kini—tied for 19th

    As you can see Weibel players brought home a lot of hardware.

I hope I did not miss any Weibel students who won a trophy.  If I did miss your child please forgive me. I have not listed the Horner players or those from any other schools who come to Friday Chess.  Most of them won trophies as well.  You can view the complete results at: http://bayareachess.com/events/15/states-alpha/
You can go to http://www.CalNorthYouthChess.org/photographs.html to find links to the U.S.Chess Federation ratings and photos by Richard Shorman and myself.

FINAL NOTE:  Friday, May 29 is our Awards Ceremonies from 3 PM to 5:30 PM for both the Weibel Team and the Weibel Club.  That will end the formal chess program for the 2014-2015 school year.

Chess is Forever,
Alan