Month: July 2022

One way to summarize Wednesday’s final installment of our Surfeit of Blitz Marathon, the 5-round G/3+0 tournament, is simply: Bada venit, Bada vidit, Bada vicit! Badamkhand Norovsambuu scored 4.5 out of 5 points for clear first place, ceding a single draw to her friend Saikhanchimeg Tsogtsaikhan, another very strong expert-level player and a first-time visitor to the club (and by “strong” we’re talking clear first with a perfect 5-0 score in the 2018 US Women’s Open, over a number of titled players—Badamkhand won the same event this year!). Alaric, Pranav, Kathan and Shahin shared 2nd place with 4 points, while Shawnak and Josh shared Under-17 1st place with 3 points.

Alaric outlasted all others in our Surfeit of Blitz Marathon, taking first place with 15 out of 18 points over four tournaments. Pranav had the only perfect score after four rounds in the G/3+0 last night and could have joined Alaric atop the marathon with a last-round win, but Badamkhand wasn’t having it, so he and Shahin shared 2nd place with 14 points, while Kathan took sole 4th with 13. The Under-17 marathon saw a tie for 1st place, with Ethan and Josh both scoring 8 points after playing in just three of the four events. The final results for the G/3+0 event and the overall marathon are in the attached images, while the marathon prizes are given below—I’ll follow up individually to ask how people wish to be paid. Congratulations to all our winners and a hearty thank you to everyone who played in this fun if eccentric event!

Blitz chess is clearly very popular with the club, given we had 63 people participate in the marathon, so we’ll do something similar again before the end of the year. I may miss the coming two Wednesdays but the club will still meet for casual and blitz chess August 3rd and 10th, and we’ll consider holding another USCF-rated event in September. As always, if you have suggestions for club activities or tournaments please let me know.

— Mark Drury

Surfeit of Blitz Marathon Prizes

Open:
1. Alaric Stein, $45
2-3. Pranav Jindal, $32.50
2-3. Shahin Aghevli, $32.50
4. Kathan Shukla, $25
5-6. Richard Shu, $17.50
5-6. Yash Shah, $17.50
7. Sean Murray, $10
8. Lasha Lakirbaia, $5
9. Kornel Csernai, $5

Under 17:
1-2. Ethan Mei, $22.50
1-2. Joshua Garrow, $22.50
3. Cody Kletter, $15
4. Zidaan Kapoor, $10

Our Surfeit of Blitz G/3+2 event was contested last night with quite a few new people joining the fray, including FM-elect Shawnak Shivakumar, who went 5-0 to take sole first place and the $25 prize. Five people were one point back, including newcomer Badamkhand Norovsambuu, a strong expert-level player, and Ethan Mei, who took home the U17 $15 first prize and a commanding lead in the U17 marathon standings. Cameron Rampell and Sahil Shivakumar shared second U17 honors with excellent 3-2 scores (Shawnak is U17, as well, but no longer needs trifle with age group prizes).

The attached images give the full results for last night’s event as well as the current marathon standings. I pulled these together rather quickly late last night so please let me know if you see any errors. Given second-place ties in the Open and U17 groups, $25 and $10 will be added to the respective marathon prizes as follows:

Open: $45, $35, $30, $25, $15, $10, $5
Under-17: $20, $10, $10, $5

Next week is the final G/3+0 event of our Surfeit of Blitz Marathon and, given Alaric’s stated affinity for the time control, odds are he’ll share in the top prize (if not win it outright). But if we’re graced with a few more strong wildcards like Shawnak and Badamkhand the final result may be far less clear. Should be entertaining, regardless, and please register online asap if you plan to play next week.

Well, there is clearly demand for blitz at the club, at least for the “slower” G/5+3 time control used last night. Forty-one people turned out for the first installment of our Surfeit of Blitz Marathon, which is perhaps twenty-one more than we were expecting, and we filled both playing rooms plus had one board in our skittles room. It was great to have so many players join us and the fact that ~90% registered online before the event made things that much easier and smoother–thank you all for taking the few seconds to do that!

Per the wall chart below, Richard, Pranav and Sean tied for first place with perfect scores, while eight others were close behind with 3 points out of 4. Joshua Garrow took the Under-17 first prize ($15) with 3 points and Raajas Dixit took second ($10) with 2.5. Given there were no ties for prizes in the U17 division last night no prize money will roll over to the U17 marathon fund this week (the blue cells in the wall chart show juniors vying for marathon prizes).

The three-way tie for first in our Open division, however, means all $50 of last night’s prizes ($25, $15, $10) will be rolled into the marathon prize fund, as promised/hoped for. At present we have ten people vying for marathon prizes (gold cells in the wall chart), so at $5/person the initial marathon prizes would have been $25, $15 and $10, but with last night’s $50 infusion we now have $35, $25, $20, $15, $5 (somewhat arbitrary, I realize). I expect the same infusion to happen next week, given it’s another 4-round event.

Note that if you thought you entered the marathon and don’t see your name highlighted in gold or blue, below, please let me know. We will also give people one more opportunity to enter the marathon before the start of next week’s first round. Again, thank you all for playing last night and I hope you enjoyed the evening as much as I did!

— Mark Drury