Club Championship Playoff Results

Our club championship blitz playoff for the 2nd-3rd overall, Under-1500 and Under-1000 prizes took place this past Wednesday in our skittles room and, after all the flags fell, Pranav Jindal took 2nd with 2.5/3 points, Andy Shih secured 3rd with 1.5 points and Cesar Tamondong and Aaron Cho tied for 4th-5th with 1 point apiece (Pranav and Andy are pictured together, below).

The U1500 group was all tied after the first round robin with each player securing the needed 1 point, but Peter Roumeliotis prevailed in the second go-round, winning the first two games against Roshan Mahanth and Anton Bobkov. Oisin Harrington wasn’t able to join us for the U1000 playoff so Banks Bennion and Benjamin Sergeant played a best-of-three blitz match, one wherein Banks’ savvy use of the clock and excellent play got the better of Benjamin over two games (Peter and Banks are also pictured below with their winnings).

Congratulations to all of our playoff contestants and winners and, again, thank you to everyone who played in this event–please let me know if you have any feedback, good or bad, which will help make future tournaments better. Regards,

Mark Drury

Club Championship Final Standings

Wednesday’s final round of our club championship offered up yet more exciting chess and a number of time scrambles which impacted the standings, and when all was said and done unrated Adithya Karavadi (pictured below on the left) stood alone atop the wall chart with 4.5 out of 5 points. Adithya’s first provisional rating will likely be Expert level when this event is rated, which should occur no later than Monday or Tuesday. Five people tied for second place with 4 points: Pranav Jindal, Aaron Cho, Andy Shih, Daniel Francis and Cesar Tamondong. Well done, all of you!

Roshan Mahanth, Anton Bobkov and Peter Roumeliotis tied for the Under-1500 prize with 3 points apiece, while the Under-1000 prize also saw a 3-way tie between Oisin Harrington, Benjamin Sergeant and Banks Bennion, all at 2 points. The ties will be settled over the board next week with some friendly G/5+0 blitz to determine who takes home the remaining premium club set and board prizes, a spectacle which may alone merit attendance this coming Wednesday.

Congratulations to Adithya and a huge thank you to everyone who played in or stopped by to spectate our first club championship–hopefully we’ll hold the same event same time next year! Regards,

Mark Drury

Club Championship Round 4 Results

We again had some very exciting games come down to the final seconds of the time control in round 4 of our club championship–improbable draws were salvaged and tough-fought seeming wins lost in the proceedings and it was a great deal of fun to be a spectator rather than a player in many cases.

Below are the round 5 pairings for tomorrow night (final round of the tournament) as well as the championship standings thus far. As a reminder, if we have ties for the 1st-3rd (2nd-3rd is really the only possibility), U1500 or U1000 prizes we’ll hold a blitz chess playoff the following week (G/5+0, number of games determined by number of players). Please let me know if you have any questions and I look forward to more exciting games during the final round on November 9th! Regards,

Mark Drury