WEIBEL CHESS RETURNS TO BEING NUMBER 1 IN CALCHESS STATES

There are bad days, average days and good days. Yesterday was a great day. Weibel Chess, for a fair number of years, has been second best at the CalChess Scholastic State Championships. Ok, not altogether true as we have shined at the Girls State Championships. Last Spring, we began a comeback winning the most divisions of any team and yesterday, Sunday, December 9, we won all four of the grades we entered in the two-day competition, albeit, one was the 7th Grade section. Our Horner students still coming to Weibel Chess, wore their old school T-shirts and won that section over an excellent and continuing growing chess program at Fallon Middle School in San Ramon.

Weibel students won the Championships in the 4th, 5th and 6th grades. Saturday, in the one-day competition we were runner ups in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. We did not have enough Kindergarten students on the Team to compete there, but I hope to recruit from the Club for the Spring State Championships.

KUDOS, all!

A very special thanks goes to Jason Cruz for without his help getting stuff to the tournament, staying there and going over games, and taking things back to my house I would have needed a week's sleep instead of just one day.

Of course, congrats to all our Coaches and Horner Junior H.S. Ass't Coaches for developing the great chess skills our players possess. Last, but not, least our Weibel parents who spent their time this weekend with their children at the Alameda County Fairgrounds.

One never knows how long one can remain numero uno, but, admittedly it feels very good.

A full report will soon appear on out Weibel Chess blog, hopefully, tomorrow. I do not have the full 1st, 2nd & 3rd Grade results yet. I am told they will be online soon so I will do all the sections then with a few more photographs of the first day's event.

Here are the names and grades of the Weibel students who were specially selected to compete from our 160 Team and Club members:

Deniz Korkmaz 1

Jason Zhu 1

Ojas Parhar 1

Stanley Kwok 1

Sara Kuntjara 2

Matthew Miu 2

Aarav Gulrajani 2

Louis Le 2

Ryan #1 Chen 2

Rohil Manwani 3

Soham Chatterjee 3

Vivaan Parhar 3

Wenyuan Xi 3

Mai-Ha Nghiem 4

Akarsh Khare 4

Edward Miu 4

Ekansh Samanta 4

Mihika Deshpande 5

Shruti Nath 5

Nikko Le 5

Reyansh #1 Gangal 5

Ryan #2 Tiong 5

Sabrina Kuntjara 6

Yesun Lee 6

Reyansh #2 Samanta 6

Vincent Yang 6

Dharshan Vetrivelan 7

Rachael Tiong 7

Prisha Jain 7

Umesh Gopi 7

WEIBEL GIRLS WIN FIRST PLACE AT THE NORTH AMERICAN GIRLS' CHAMPIONSHIPS

Old news—a week old: While I was holding my Weibel Chess Quads on Saturday, November 3, and busy recovering on Sunday, eight of the 22 Weibel Girls Team members attended a Bay Area Chess tournament, Northern American Girls Championships sponsored by the Susan Polgar Foundation. I only require that all our girls attend the CalChess Girls Age Level held in March and hosted by Berkeley Chess School. There are five different girls’ tournaments held in Northern California each year and I selected the one that carries on the tradition of the first all-girls event set back in the 1990’s by the Sojourner Truth Girls Championships which drew around 140 players each year. That event was a happening, meaning it offered far more than just chess competition. The girls’ Age Level for the last two years followed that approach. I do hope it continues as I understand that the original organizer has stepped aside.

I had not been following the entries or the results due to my own event. A few of the parents contacted me and were excited that we took home a second-place trophy as their daughters were new to the Team. None of them recalled who won the first-place trophy.

I think it was Monday when I first checked the results online, but the only posting was the US Chess Federation ratings. I was pleased to see that Judit Sztaray, the organizer had obtained over one hundred players, almost all from the Bay Area.

I wanted to write a story here, but I needed the actual results for the USCF does not post by tiebreaks. I wrote to Judit and asked about the posting of the results. She informed me she has been very busy. Of course, this did not surprise me as she is running one of the biggest programs in the country with many tournaments almost every weekend. She has also lost her right-hand man Abel Talamantez who has been selected to be the new Director of the Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club in San Francisco-one of the oldest chess clubs in the U.S. founded in 1854. Kudos to Abel!

A couple of days ago I saw the actual results and informed my chess parents that Weibel girls actually took first place out of 14 teams in the overall tournament where all the sections were counted to provide the winning team. The parents were thrilled to read that we actually won.

I did receive a couple of photos from one parent that I am posting here.

The four girls whose points counted for the Team were: Yesun Lee in the 1400 plus section; Sabrina Kuntjara in the Under 1400 section; Charlene Kwok in the Under 700 hundred section and Olivias Li in the Under 300 section. Yesun took third in her section. Sabrina tied for third in her section. Charlene tied for fifth in her section and Olivia tied for eighth in her section.

Other trophy winners from Weibel were Rachel Tiong, who attends Horner JHS, who tied for fourth in the 1400 plus section; Shruti Nath who tied for eighth in the Under 1400 section. Others competing were: Sara Kuntjara, Eliana Cai, Naomi Li. 

WEIBEL PLAYERS AT LABOR DAY KIDS TOURNAMENT + COACHES AND OUR PLAYERS IN STATES

                                

Weibel School started Wednesday. Chess doesn't start until September 21. I was thrilled to see a number of Weibel players this weekend in the Labor Day Kids Championship and the three/two day State Championships being held in Union City over this Labor Day weekend. We had a fine showing in the Kids Tournament.

Charlene Kwok cleaned up with five wins to take first place in the Under 600 Division. The second place winner in that section only received three points. Tied for the second place was another Weibel player Kevin Xu. Ojas Parhar took home a sixth place trophy. Weibel won the Team trophy.

In the Under 300 Division Stanley Kwok won the first place trophy with four points. Four other players had four points, but Stanley had the best tie breaks.

Other Weibel players in the Kids event were Vivaan Parhar and Amruth Settipali. 

I will not know how well our players in the various section of the Open State Championship, which is mostly adults and our two coaches, GM Enrico Sevillano and Frisco DelRosario faired until Monday evening.