WEIBEL CHESS GIRLS PROVE THEIR METTLE

The Weibel Girls Chess Team, winner of seven National titles, defeated the Berkeley Chess School Queens today, Saturday, January 13, 2018. Fourteen members of each team went head to head twice--once as white and once as black. The final score was 26 1/2 to 1 1/2 in favor of our female Wildcats.

WEIBEL QUADS ONCE AGAIN PROVE TO BE VERY POPULAR

 

http://www.CalNorthYouthChess.org/photographs.html

The last of the three CalNorth Youth Chess Weibel Quads and Grand Prix tournaments took place last Saturday, December 9.  These Quads, players facing three other opponents, have been very popular over the years.  A large reason has been our ability to set a Quad with children very near the same skill level and age as well as their avoiding playing those from the same school or club.  Our numbers decreased this year.  The December Quad drew 130 competitors.  Fifteen years or so back, in December, the Quads drew near 300 players.  Those were in the days when they were the only game in town.  Today many organizations hold youth chess tournaments.  In some ways, I am happy the numbers have decreased for with age my energy level has also decreased.   I am pleased that I can still say that we are the most popular Quads in Northern California drawing at least three times the number of players of other organizations.  The Weibel Quads continue to have players coming from as far away as Santa Rosa to the north and Monterey to the south.

 

The Grand Prix provides points to players who competed in all three Quads.  The winners of this year’s Grand Prix received larger trophies for first, second and third place plus free entries to the Age Level Championships on February 4, 2018 plus, for first place, all of next Fall’s Weibel Quads.  This year’s winners were:

UNDER 900 U.S. Chess Federation Rating:

1^st, Tanish Balamuggan ( Marshall Pomeroy School)

2^nd, Matthew Miu (Weibel School) & Anish Shankar (Weibel School)

3^rd, Parth Pandhare (Royal Chess), Kai Lum (Basis School), Arnav Pradhan (Horner School)

OVER 900 U.S. Chess Federation Rating:

1^st, Mihir Patil (Royal Chess)

2^nd, Reyansh Gangal (Weibel School)

3^rd, Advaith Mopuri (Chadbourne School)

You can go to http://www.CalNorthYouthChess.org/photographs.html for links to the results, U.S. Chess Federation ratings and our three photographers’ pictures.

The next big CalNorth Youth Chess competition will be our Age Level Championships on February 4, 2018 at the very family friendly Newark Pavilion.  This event has drawn around 500 players in past years. Information and an application can be found at http://www.calnorthyouthchess.org/AgeLevel2018/

Ten years back Alan Kirshner, the founder of Weibel Chess, established this tournament to celebrate his 70^th birthday.  He is thrilled to still be here for his 80^th birthday tournament.

Carl Moy, the present organizer, has also created a two day tournament for high rated youth players on February 3^rd  and 4^th. http://www.calnorthyouthchess.org/AgeLevel2018/AgeLevelInvitational.html

BREAKING NEWS

BREAKING NEWS

First Grade Weibel Chess Team member Louis Le places 6^th at the Grade Level Nationals in Florida this weekend, December 9 and 10, 2017.  His brother, Fourth Grader, Nikko places 17^th   , after tying two Expert and losing his only game, in the seventh round.

Weibel students shined at the CalNorth Youth Chess Weibel Quads this weekend. We will see a lot of U.S. Chess Federation ratings go up. The Quads drew 130 players from 42 different schools.  I do not have the results to post as Prakash Narayan, the father of two boys who went to Weibel, and continues to help after some ten years, is now placing the Quads in the computer to send to the U.S. Chess Federation for posting.  I do have the outcome of the Grand Prix—points given to players who attended all three Fall Quads.  Weibel studens, Matthew Miu placed second in the Under 900 Section of the quads and Reyansh Gangal finished second in the Over 900 category.  KUDOS to all!

REPORT ON WEIBEL CHESS: SUCCESSES AT THE STATE GRADE LEVEL CHAMPIONSHIPS, DEC 2 & 3, 2017

            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 15^th 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 14^th 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

           

           

WEIBEL GIRLS WIN THE POLGAR ALL-GIRLS CHAMPIONSHIPS

This weekend, November 4-5, 2017, GM Susan Polgar held her North American All-Girls Championship in Santa Clara. Weibel Chess won the first place trophy for all the sections combined. Our top performers were Mai-Ha Nghiem who won her section with a perfect 5-0 and Sabrina Kuntjara 3.5-1.5 who tied for second in her section. KUDOS to all our girls.

HALLOWEEN FACE OFF AT BOARD 2

A face off at board 2 during the Weibel Chess Club on Tuesday afternoon, October 31, 2017. Note: All the players obtained special Halloween ribbons instead of candy. Photograph thanks to Gaurang Mehta. I was in Salt Lake City and can't wait to see the results of who won, the Shark or the Minecraft (?).

WEIBEL FALL CHESS QUADS - SATURDAYS, OCT.14, NOV.4, DEC 9

Presents the

Weibel Fall Chess Quads

&

Grand Prix 2017

Oct. 14, Nov. 4, Dec. 9

http://www.calnorthyouthchess.org/Applications/FallQuads17-GP

Since 1999 the Weibel Chess Youth Quads have been the best attended quads in California.  Get more information and sign-up your children at the link above and enjoy seeing their chess games between 10 AM and 2 PM.  Your children can participate in one, two or all three events.  We do our best to see that at their table of four players they will be closely matched in age and skill level.  We also do our best to avoid siblings and children from the same school or chess club competing against each other.

Distinctive trophies for all those that tie for first place at their table.  A choice of chess medals for those who do not win a trophy.  We hope to see you there.  A note about Saturday, October 14.  It is National Chess Day!