TO THE WEIBEL CHESS COMMUNITY AND ALL OUR SUPPORTERS

I am pleased to report that the Weibel Chess Team and Club players with their parents and their coaches deserve Kudos for their results at the 7^th Annual CalNorth Youth Chess Age Level Sunday, February 9.  In 2000, during a conversation with NM Sunil Weeramantry, the father of  GM Hiraku Nakamura, presently the number 1 US player, he told me an interesting story.  When Hiraku was 12 years old Sunil told him that he felt it was time to get him a Grand Master as his coach. Sunil reported that Hiraku told him that he definitely did not want a coach.  Sunil, surprised, asked him why.  Hiraku said, “Well, then they will take credit for my greatness.”

            The moral of the story is that while we as parents, friends, teachers and coaches can inspire and provide opportunities to our children their ultimate success comes from within.  A few weeks ago I had two of our Weibel coaches patting themselves for training one of our students.  I had to step in and tell them of the long successful history this young girl had in chess before she entered any of their classrooms.  She took the best from each of them and succeeded because she was the talent.  I get sick to my stomach when someone in the business of chess exploits the talents of a player who took one lesson from them, went to their camp one summer or shook their hand.   Granted, I know they are making a living at chess or  have a need to assuage their own ego, but I say, let the results speak for themselves. I thank the large number of Weibel players and their parents for coming to the Age Level, especially those parents and coaches that volunteered their time. In my mind they expressed the respect for Weibel and the program I organized because of my children and one of their coaches, Richard Shorman. 

            On to the Weibel Team and individual results in the CalNorth Youth Chess Age Level Championships, one of the largest youth chess by age events, in the nation.  This year Carl Moy skillfully organized the event. 

I was asked a few weeks back by a chess program director as to how the CalNorth Youth event drew so many players—over 500 signed up this year.  Sadly, due to sickness and other reasons many players withdrew at the last minute.   As soon as it is rated, which should be Tuesday, I will have a better count.  My response to this chess organizer was that Northern California has loads of programs and players that are boycotting, for various reason, the CalChess State tournaments under the auspices of  Dr. Salman Azhar.  These players, schools and programs have selected to come to the CalNorth events so they can test their mettle.  Added to these numbers are the players who love good competition wherever they can find it.

            Weibel took first place Team trophies in the 6, 7, 8, 9(here we tied with Chadborne), 10, and 11 year old divisions.  In the 12 year old Team division Tierra Linda Junior High School of San Carlos won and in the 13 year old division (the oldest age competing) Hopkins Junior High School took first.

            There was no Team trophy in the 4-5 Age Group or the 4-9 Special Open competitions.  The 4-9 age group was established to give the top young players longer time controls. This year Carl Moy decided to create a special award called the Kirshner Cup for first place.  He felt this would be a special legacy award for my creation of this event.  I might note that all first place winners were given certificates to attend the NorCal House of Chess Summer camps.

            Let me begin the individual awards with the 4-9 Special Open.  I worked a computer in the younger players hall.  Due to the longer time controls of the 4-9 Special Open Division they played in the 10 through 13 year-old building. After we were done I walked over to the other building and was met by an excited third grader Oliver Wu who shouted out, “I think I have won the Kirshner Cup.”   I felt great for this was another birthday award for me—Oliver is Weibel’s top third grade player and one of the best in the country.  I felt honored to give him the trophy at the awards’ ceremonies. 

            Three other Weibel 3^rd grade players entered this division designed for those with a minimum 1000 rating:  Louis Law,  Vincent Wang and Eshaan Mistry.  Eshaan decided to switch over to the 4-9 Open after competing for three rounds in the 8 year old section without losing a game.

We awarded 15 plus trophies.  The plus refers to those who tied at 15th place.  We awarded logo chess medals to all participants.  The 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 year olds played 5 games.  The 10, 11, 12. 13 year olds played 4 games. Here are the Weibel trophy winners:

FIVE YEAR OLDS (23 entries):

Aakash Koneru (2^nd)

David Gao (3^rd)

SIX YEAR OLDS (51 entries):

Rutansh Pathak (3^rd tie)

Alex Han (9^th tie)

Mihir Gadre (11^th )

Nik Sadeghi (11^th tie)

Reyansh Samanta (11^th tie)

Zayaan Madhini (11^th tie)

SEVEN YEAR OLDS (79 entries):

Dharshan Vetrivelan (2^nd tie)

Prisha Jain (4^th tie)

Weslie Chen (4^th tie)

Umesh Gopi (4^th tie)

Isha Varada (4^th tie)

Aryan Yenni (4^th tie)

Erin Law (14^th tie)

Mihir Chauhan (14^th tie)

EIGHT YEAR OLDS (109 entries)

Sasha Prakir (1^st tie)

Sidarth Raman (4^th)

Surya Somasundaram (4^th tie)

NINE YEAR OLDS (76 entries)

Aaron Lee (3^rd)

Stanley Ko (3^rd tie)

Zayaan Khan (3^rd tie)

Frederick Zhang (3^rd tie)

TEN YEAR OLDS  (75 entries)

Jeremy Chen (1^st)

Rahul Ravishankar(4^th tie)

Anish Kasam (7^th tie)

Jaden Wei (7^th tie)

Prithvi Nagamanivel (7^th tie)

Tanabh Mishra (7^th tie)

ELEVEN YEAR OLDS (45 entries)

Daniel Emmanuel (3^rd tie)

Suryateja Mandadi (5^th)

Raisha Khan (5^th tie)

Avi Khanna (5^th tie)

Praveen Ravindar (5^th tie)

Avikam Chauhan (12^th tie)

Shivangi Gupta (12^th tie)

Congratulations to all of the above and to all the other Weibel attendees who spent the day with tough competition and I am sure learned a lot of chess on the practice field.

Alan

Director

Weibel Chess

           

WEIBEL CHESS GIRLS REMAIN NUMERO UNO

Today was the Eighth Annual Girls State Chess Championships and for the eighth year Weibel won a section.  This year Weibel won the Team Championship in the K-6 and the K-8 sections.  Yup, Junior High School. Since we had so many great players in the K-6, we placed two of our best in the K-8—Serafina Show and Raisah Khan, both sixth graders.  Serafina won the section and became this years Junior High School Champion.  On her way to the victory she drew a 2199 rated player by forcing a draw through a three-move repetition that prevented her opponent from winning.  Today was Serafina’s birthday and a beautiful one it turned out to be.  It was also my birthday and a great one for me as well as I can add to our next year’s T-shirts that Weibel has won at least one section in a CalChess State Championship from 1990 to 2014.  This was an important win since Weibel did not attend the CalChess Grade Level and may not attend the CalChess Super States in April if the CalChess President does not respond to my request to continue negotiations on establishing due process protection for parents and players outside the playing hall.

I will add more detail in a later note about how our individual players did when I get a list of all the results.  I would be remiss in this short note if I failed to mention that the K-6 Co-Champion, winning the first place trophy on tie-breaks, was Aria Lakhmani, a former Weibel student who switched to Warm Springs last year but still attends our Friday sessions.   Kudos to all players and their supporters at today’s games.

JOANNA LIU IS NOW A NATIONAL CHESS EXPERT

My KUDOS to Joanna Liu. After last weekend's Golden State Open in Concord Joanna broke the 2000 (2005) rating barrier and is now a National Expert.  Joanna, a sixth grade student at Gomes, who led her school Team to a National Open Scholastic title last Spring, is a former Weibel student.  Joanna attended Weibel until the middle of fourth grade when her family moved into the Gomes district.  When she left Weibel she had obtained the highest ever rating for a girl in our program, 1587.  This was broken by her good friend Serafina Show last week with her 1613.  I sent the following note to Joanna's father Jay:

"Please congratulate Joanna for reaching the Expert title.  She is only the fourth ever former Weibel student to have obtained an Expert title: Kevin Moy, NM Michael Wang, NM Rohan Agrawal, Micah Fisher-Kirshner.   In my 25 years with chess in NorCal only one young girl has obtained the title of Master.  This was Jennie Frenklakh at 16 back in the 80’s.  I am sure that Joanna will break that record."

BREAKING NEWS: Serafina Show Breaks Record

Serafina Show has just become the highest rated girl ever while at Weibel Chess.  Her present rating is 1613.  The previous best was 1587 (Joanna Liu).  This would definitely place Serafina in our Hall of Fame if  she were not already a member for winning two State Girls Championships.  Serafina also joins two other girls (Jocelyn Lee and Sharon Tseung) who, since 1989, have been the highest rated player participating in our chess team classes on Friday.* KUDOS To Serafina.

*Anthony Zhou, who is a sixth grade student at Weibel, has a current rating of 1810.  He does come to help out the Chess Team on Friday by going over games. He is not taking the classes or playing in our Friday tournament.

WEIBEL CHESS TEAM WILL NOT ATTEND THE CALCHESS GRADE LEVEL CHAMPIONSHIPS

12/21/13
I just sent this e-mail to the President of CalChess, our State affiliate of the U.S. Chess Federation:
"Hi Tom,
I had hoped we could reach some sort of tentative agreement or get close to a tentative agreement by yesterday, December 20,  so I could forward the information to my parents for a vote on whether they would feel secure under the arrangements we agreed to or were close to agreeing to.  With the Grade Level three weeks away and school out with many of my parents leaving the area for the holidays I could not in all good faith continue negotiating.  I need to let the Weibel parents and players know if the Team will attend.  I thought we were getting close and you were negotiating in good faith, but then yesterday morning you sent me a different proposal than your previous one.  Interestingly that proposal related back to the original and I was at a loss for words.  I begged you to clarify which proposal we were working on as well as to inform me as to the names  of the three members of the CalChess Scholastic Council besides  Lynn Reed.  I asked you to do so with all deliberate speed.  I have not heard back from you.   The deadline has passed.  Sadly, you leave me no choice but to notify my parents that Weibel will not be attending the State Grade Level this year as we did last year when it was organized by Elizabeth Shaughnessy.

I want to assure you that I still have a desire to have Weibel attend the State Championships as we have since 1989 and before Salman Azhar, as organizer, turned on our players and parents in 2011.  Weibel had only missed the 2005 State Championships before that.  You know that was because the organizer at the time unilaterally switched the meet after getting approval from CalChess for a date he said he would hold then.  I had contracted my Regionals for a month after the original posted day so my players could attend the States.  The organizer set his new date to the same day I had set my Regionals.  The CalChess Board objected.  The organizer, who was also the CalChess treasurer walked off with all the money.  The CalChess, under its lawyers advice to get back their treasury held by the organizer, finally voted approval to support the conflicting date.  You also know that the Regionals not only drew more than twice the number of players as the so-called Sate Championships, but the CalChess Board members,minus one, attended the Regionals and not the States they had been contractually forced to hold.  I can’t remember if it were you or Eric Hicks that was forced to remove the famous picture of then Board President Elizabeth Shaughnessy shaking hands with me at the Regionals.

Where to now?  Do you want to respond to my earlier requests and inform me which proposal we are working on in hopes that we might be able to achieve an agreement for you to present to your Board and for me to present to my parents before the April 26 and 27 CalChess Scholastic States?
--
Chess is Forever!
Alan"

As I noted in an earlier e-mail, where Weibel parents can attend Salman Azhar's organized events if they disagree with the vote of the vast majority of our parents for the last two years if they do not identify themselves as Weibel students on their forms or wear our T-shirt, they cannot have this freedom at the State Championships.  This event has a Team competition.  This translates to it is mandatory that players formerly compete for a school even if they are not members of the schools chess program.  While I would like to have Teams at these events I agree with the action of the parents and I hold that as members of this Team we have no choice but to respect their decision.  Weibel Team members cannot attend the Grade Level next month since they will have to identify themselves as competing for our Team.  As you read in the letter above, I still have some hope that Tom Langland, the CalChess President, would like to continue looking for a solution in time for the April State Championships.  As is always the case, members who do not adhere to a competitive Team policy cannot remain on the Team.  This is why we have a small competitive Team and a large Chess Club.

I am inserting a summary of the reasons for the parents' votes that I forwarded to Tom Langland, CalChess President, to remind him what happened.  Following the summary are links to the letters describing the disturbing events at the 2011 CalChess Grade Level.  The Lu, Show and Zhou families sent these to the U.S. Chess Federation.  After a year of not responding I was able to get the Executive Director of the U.S. Chess Federation, Bill Hall,  to explain, at least why he took no action.  It pretty well boiled down to the fact that there were no rules in the tournament rules to cover the actions take by the organizer.

Here is my summary to Tom Langland:
Salman, in the public arena, attacked one of our parents and her child, refused to intervene when one, a fourth grade Weibel child, was being yelled at by a parent from another school. Then, in my opinion, Salman went off the deep end on our child's father for getting justifiably upset for Salman's refusal to intervene immediately.  Salman even went as far as to unilaterally remove the abused child from the playing hall in the middle of his game to punish his Dad even though we had a parent waiting for the child to finish his game.  I remind you that the parent who screamed at and threatened my player never had his son removed from his game and  that father kept sneaking back into the hotel.  Our parent left the hotel when asked.  He only wanted to wait across the street from the hotel to wait the outcome of his son’s game.  Of even more concern, as identified in one of the four complaints our parents wrote to the USCF, was that Salman left the child alone in a darkened hallway after pulling him from his game  without supervision while he went outside to find his father. I reiterate—the problem is not between Salman and myself.  The problem is that when a person in authority, teacher, police officer, parent or chess organizers becomes upset with someone as Salman apparently did at me and takes his anger out on others in the ugly manner he did—that person should not be handling children no matter how efficient an organizer he or she is.

To read a more extensive summary I posted in the U.S. Chess Federation's Chess Life Online:

http://www.uschess.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=235943&sid=e36f324f4c9d4566aa5a0dee76a0ad9a#p235943

Links to the letters from Mike Lu, Susan Wang (Michael & Sharon Lu's parents) and Zhi Zhou (Anthony Zhou's father) as well as Christy Lin (Serafina Show's mother):

http://www.CalNorthYouthChess.org/COMPLAINTS-AGAINST-SALMAN-AZHAR

Miscellaneous:

Don't forget to checkout the NorCal House of Chess' camps and tournament over the holidays.

Mark the Age Level Championships, February 9, on your calendar.

Once again:
Have a wonderful holiday season!

Chess is Forever,
Alan

Pre-Vacation Newsletter to Weibel Team Parents

We will meet for chess this Friday, December 20th, to start at 2:55.  Please let
me know if your child will not be there so they can receive a half point bye.
This will still be a USCF rated event.  As I noted in the information sheet at
the beginning of the year, we will meet when school has half day sessions
unless I notify you otherwise.  Homework will be due on Friday, December 20.
As I believe I mentioned in an earlier e-mail, there will be no homework over
the vacation—because that is what it should be, a vacation.  I understand that
our Team children (well most of them) love chess and want to study and play
games.  That is great, because it is their choice not a required assignment.
 We return to chess on January 10.  The first homework will be due on January
17.

I am still in negotiations with the President of CalChess, Tom Langland,  to try
and find a way where our concerned parents can feel safe for themselves and
their children at the CalState Championships run by Salman Azhar. I, of course,
as all of you, need assurance that our Team will receive fair treatment through
some form of due process.   My hope in these negotiations is to also set up a
process by which the other schools refusing to attend the States or reducing
the attendees will find a way to return to the Northern California scholastic
chess community.  The negotiations are progressing, as negotiations do, very
slowly.  To be candid,  I do not believe they will conclude by the deadline I
set of December 20.  I explained to Tom that I need to let you know if we will
attend.  The Grade Level States are the second week in January.

I have not taken a vote this year as in the past two years because I have been
trying to resolve the situation through negotiations for the last two months.
 If I believe we have reached a compromise that CalChess can live with and we
can, I will understand the feelings of any parents who still do not want their
families anywhere near Dr. Azhar.   Translation, the requirement will be waived
for attending the States for those parents who decide they cannot go due to what
had occurred despite an agreement.  I do need to make it clear that since it is
mandatory for a players school to be noted in the State Championships, it would
be violating the parents' previous motions if any Weibel student entered a
division where s/he would need to be reported publicly as a competitive Team.

Those of you that were here for the horrors of the last Salman Azhar State
Championships are familiar with what occurred.  Those of you that were not will
receive a summary of the events as expressed in the complaints filed by four of
our parents to the United States Chess Federation plus a link to the actual
letters.  I hope it will become clear why two years in a row the parents voted
not to attend the State Championships organized by Salman Azhar. This year I
did have one parent read the letters as she did not understand what happened.
 She indicated that she was shocked by the events and would keep her child away
from Salman Azhar as well. We did attend the Grade Level States last year
because Salman Azhar was not the organizer.  So to be clear, we are not
boycotting CalChess.
 
This is my segue to the requirement that our Team girls attend the CalChess
Girls State Championships in San Rafael at St Marks School organized by Ray
Orwig on Saturday, February 1. You can download the application at
http://www.calchess.org/pdfs/event_flyers/2013_02_01_CalChess_Girls.pdf   You
will need to mail this in.  Ray does not have online registration.  Please note
that there is a requirement to join CalChess ($5) for this tournament. Since
last year’e event was before Feb 1, you will need to rejoin. Join online at:
http://www.calchess.org/membership_submission_page.html

Everyone should gear up for February 9, Sunday, our next big event.  This year
Carl Moy has graciously agreed to give this old man a break and organize the
Age Level Championships. The competition will once again draw over 500 players,
I am sure.  As many of you know, I started it in 2008 to celebrate my 70th
birthday.  I have now decided that it will be my legacy chess event.Therefore, it needs someone younger to keep it going.  This year Carl has also created a first Annual Kirshner Cup for the Open 4-9 year old section.  I will be proud to hand it out to the winner.

One final note.  This Friday I will be thrilled to hand out another Honor Roll
cap.  The recipient this week, breaking 1000 at the Weibel Quads Saturday
(ratings are posted), is Rahul Ravishankar.  He went to 1024.  KUDOS!

--
Chess is Forever!
Alan

NEW WEIBEL ELITE PLAYER

BREAKING NEWS:  Jeremy Chen is now 1459 and becomes our 6th Varsity-Elite player.  I am ordering his jacket.  KUDOS!