Our Weibel Chess and Horner Chess players
had a very good showing at the CalChess State Grade Level this last weekend,
December 2 and 3, 2017. The tournament held in the Santa Clara Convention
Center had a record breaking 487 players.
While that number did include players who competed in a Junior Varsity
Division on Saturday the main competition did draw 412 competitors. I am happy
to say that this event is becoming more popular. It has been slow growing from the 325
competitors that came to Fremont in 1995 and the 375 the competed in Stockton
in 2007. Those number only included the
Championship sections. I am convinced
that under the very able and efficient Judit Sztaray, the organizer, the
CalChess Grade Level Championships will continue to grow.
I mentioned that the Junior Varsity
where we did have a few players who selected to attend on their own. Four players to be exact with one in the K-12
Under 1000 rating section and three in the K-6 Under 600 rating section. To be
in the team competition you most have minimum of two players. In the grade level the top three players’
points count. If you have, let me say,
six players than any three of that group who finish with the most wins will
have their points count. Our three
players in the K-6 Under 600 won first place for Weibel. Anish Shankar led the
Team with four wins out of five games, tying for second place. The other two,
who achieved points for the Team, were Farhan Ali and Roger Yao. Obviously, these sections were not part of
the Grade Level competition as they did not compete by grade.
The Grade Level started on Saturday
with all grades from 4 through 12 in contention. Our 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 teams competed for two
days. The Kindergarten, First, second
and third Grades played on Sunday only.
The 4-12 played three games each day and the K-3 grades contest 5 rounds
on Sunday.
Our greatest success, in my view, was
from our Sixth Grade Team. Mission San
Jose Elementary School won the grade, but by only one point. Their team rating entering the tournament was
1698. Weibel’s team rating was
1494. Mission’s top player, Kevin Pan
was actually 2116 before the event. He
won the Championship with 6 points. Our top players worked hard and finished
hard. Prisha Jain (1366) and Aaron Hu
(1687) led our Team with 4.5 points tying for second place. Umesh Gopi (1291)
gave us 4 points as the third player tying for fifth place. Dharshan Vetrivelan also had 4 points, but Umesh’s
tie-breaks were higher. The U.S.C.F.
ratings that Prisha, Umesh and Dharshan finished with prove how impressive
their performance was. The new ratings:
Prisha at 1435, Dharshan at 1530 and Umesh at 1354. Rachel Tiong (1243) and
Isha Varada(1201) were our other players in the sixth grade section. We sure do
have an impressive group of girls. No
wonder they have won seven National Championship since 2011.
My favorite Weibel Team was our
Kindergarten group. We only have four
Kindergarten students this year and one was out of the country. None of the three were required to
compete. I asked the parents if they
could pretty-please join as we need three players to compete as a team. They all were happy to do so and one parent
even changed his travel plans so his son could be at the Championships. Best of all they tied for first place. I know that reading this those parents will
say, “Huh, we brought home the first place trophy and there was no mention of a
tie.” Well, when I saw the results I saw
a name on our Team I did not recognize I contacted the organizer and chief
director. I do not know how he got
placed on the Weibel Kindergarten Team so I figured he might be from Weibel but
not on the Team. The boy entered my
Quads today and placed Chadborne as his school. Without his points we tied with Basis and we
are both champions. Yes, we have the first place trophy. I give KUDOS plus a shout-out to our three Kindergartners
and their parents. Our great
Kindergarttners are Deniz Korkmaz, Shivam Gupta, Amruth Settipalli. 
We did win a few other sections. Our fourth graders came in first by 1.5
points over Harker. Nikko Le (1714)
obtained 4 points. Avyukt Bhardwaj(1013)
also obtained 4 points. Considering he has just joined our Varsity group and
was by far the lowest rating of anyone who got a trophy he had a most amazing
tournament! Their fellow team members
were: Ryan Tiong (1059) and Reyansh Gangal (1085).
Our former Weibel students now at
Horner took the seventh and eighth grade championships. We may not be the
number one team in NorCal, but our former players really fit our motto, “Chess
is Forever.” Horner destroyed Hopkins
with a score of 12 to 7. Oliver Wu
(1985) won 5 and tied for first place.
He has won his fair share of State Championships over the years. It was great to see him and his wonderful
family again. Aayush Shah (1342)
obtained 3.5 points. Another one of our Weibel Assistant Coaches, Sidarth Raman
(1377), also obtained 3.5 points. They tied for seventh. Louis Law (1408), also
an Assistant Coach, received a trophy tying for 15th place. Three
other Horner students competed—Navish Sinha (1091), Tanish Sathish (893),
Prabhav Vashist (962, assistant Coach).
Horner came through in eight grade obtaining
11.5 points against an up and coming chess power, Fallon Middle School, with
8.5. Hopkins also had 8.5 points. Two of
the three Horner players were from Weibel-Rithwik Narenda (1727, Assistant
Coach) had 4.5 points and tied for second place. Zayaan Khan (1584) received 3.5 and tied for
eighth place as did Ashul Govindu (1578).
I do not know what school he attended before Horner.
Our losses came in fifth grade,
third grade, second grade and first grade. In fifth grade we lost to Mission 13
to 11.5. Yesun Lee (1295) and Vincent Yang (1391) did beautifully obtaining 4
points each against tough competition. Yesun’s rating jumped to 1451. In all fairness, much of that jump came from
another tournament that occurred right before the Grade Level. She tied for
sixth place. Vincent Yang also tied for sixth place with four points with a
rating jump, also with a tournament before the Grade Level, to 1451. Our third point player, whose points counted
for our second place trophy, was Reyansh Samanta (1179). He obtained 3.5 points and a tie for 14th
place. Our back-up team member was Erin
Law (1255) who finished with 3 points.
While I truly expected to win third
grade, it just wasn’t to be our day. We took a second to Meyerholz whose team
player average was 991 to our 1115. I
know our players also went home feeling bad, but as the old saying goes, “There
is always next year.” We lost 9 to
8. We will push it aside and prepare for
the Spring State Championships.. Our three top players were Ekansh Samanta
(1140), Mai-Ha Nghiem(1164) and Edward Miu( 969) Our back-up player was Akarsh
Khare (1041).
Our second graders put up a tough
battle, but Mission San Jose Elementary School was just too strong for us. We lost 10.5 to 8. Wenbo Xi (663), Soham Chatterjee (570) and
Drake Long (627) were the ones whose points counted for the team. Our back-up players were Lucas Chiang (457)
and Wenyuan Xi (742).
Our first grade team took a third out
of five teams. Mission San Jose took
first with 13 points. Basis of Fremont took second with 10.5 and we obtain 10
points for third. We have some truly
talented players in this group but it looks as if they need to study more and
definitely play in more tournaments to use their skills to their best
advantage. Ryan Chen (827), Louis Love
Le (806) and Mathew Miu (590) were our players that obtained our team points. Mintal Ye (590) and Aarav Gulrajani (566) were
our reserves. As I noted earlier, these are talented chess players. I do expect that next year they will finish
on top of the pack.
I am thrilled to report that most of
the parents and children did stay through the Awards ceremonies, so different
from last year Weibel Team. We had representation for the awards, both individual
and team. Thank you, and thank you to the Parent Teacher’s Organization for
their willingness to sponsor the Weibel chess program for the last thirty years.
Of course, Weibel would not be the great team it is if it weren’t for our
outstanding instructors. Three of them
were there to go over the players games this weekend, so thank you to Jason Cruz, Kevin Moy and
Demetrius Goins.
And,
so I close with a “wait until next year.”
Chess is Forever,
Alan
RESULTS AND
PHOTOGRAPHS CAN BE VIEWED FROM THE LINKS AT http://www.CalNorthYouthChess.org/photographs.html
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