REPORT ON WEIBEL CHESS AT THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL NATIONALS
I am waiting for my plane to leave Dallas. I thought I might as well get a report out to the Weibel Chess parents or at least that one person sitting on the edge of his chair waiting for this information. ;-)
The Weibel news is mixed. The good (almost great news) is that all but one person wore their Weibel Team T-shirts all weekend. It helped the players and parents bond as a team. Our spirit was high even if our scores weren’t as high as we would have liked. I was excited to see our elite players take pride in their jackets. They wore them during most of the rounds.
On the positive side:
I was happy that I invited Gomes (Fremont) and Bret Harte (Modesto) to share our large Team Room. We felt a brotherhood/sisterhood of being from Northern California. Success and accomplishment come not just from trophies, but from being a part of a community.
Demetrius Goins, our coach, amazed people in his staying power. He had few breaks during the day as he threw all his energy and extensive chess knowledge in preparing our players and some of the Gomes players for their next games.
There were few negatives. One impacted our team and caused some unwanted tension and lack of sleep. Almost all flights were cancelled Thursday due to thunderstorms, hail and tornados in Dallas. Flight had to be rearranged to get to Dallas. A number of our players had to take byes the first round for fear of not arriving in time on their re-booked flights. Anthony Zhou, our highest rated player, decided to gamble and try and make the hour deadline before being forfeited. He made it with about five minutes to spare and went on to win his game.
Almost everything went smoothly at the tournament. The Chief TD , however, apparently made a decision based upon his philosophy that reversed two years of a peace that had occurred between many teams and Washington State players. Washington State has its own rating system. When Washington State players enter a Nationals their USCF ratings are quite deceptive. Some feel that is intentional. For example, a Washington team in the K3 Under 800 section had players rated by their system over 1700 and others 1500 and 1300 and they had played dozens of competition chess games. Their USCF ratings were way under 800 due to having played these games years ago. The Chief TD informed the large group of protesters that as far as he was concerned all non-USCF rating system and activities were illegal. Obviously, this was a business power ploy on his part that lacked any ethical considerations. He had, in my opinion, absolutely no concern for the players. I loved watching my brethren and sisters from New York come down on the Chief TD whom they viewed as arrogant. I personally felt he was just a snot. Obviously, it isn’t just in Northern California that we have one or two people who use their power and status for their own purposes disregarding the players.
How went the tournament for Weibel? I was excited that all our players were taking their time before moving. Only once or twice did a player return from his/her game in under 20 minutes. A few years ago a dozen players would have been back in the Team room in that amount of time. Many of our players went three hours and a couple even lasted almost to the end of the time control. Shivangi Gupta seemed to do this in almost every round. She, like a number of other Weibel players, found themselves playing higher rated players in every round. I do want to provide my special kudos to second grade student Dharsahan Vetrivelan as he used his full time during one of his games.
Another second grade student who deserves Kudos is Aaron Hu. He played a slew of people 400 to 500 points higher and finished the tournament with 5 out of seven points in the K-3 championships. He was by far the big surprise of the tournament and deserved his trophy and loads of accolades.
Anvi Surapaneni was the heroine of the team as she won the K-6 Under 1000 competition with a perfect score. While winners of any of the Under or non-rated sections cannot use the title Champion, I would definitely call her a champion even if I must use a small c.
In the K-6 Under 1000 competition Sashrika Pandey also came home with a trophy for her five wins. Our Team took third in this section only a ½ point out of first. We had 20 points and the first place team had 20.5 points.
I believe in this year’s National Championships our players confronted their most difficult competition ever. They did far better than last year, however. We failed to come home with many individual trophies, but our teams picked up a few. In fact, only the players I have already mentioned and Oliver Wu in the K-3 section brought home any hardware.
The Weibel Team results:
Based on the initial rankings of the teams in the sections we entered our final results were good. Translation—we placed higher than we entered. Yet, I had hoped we would do better. The K-3 Championships provided our best chance for a title. Through most of the rounds seven teams including Weibel were within one point of first place. In the sixth round Mission San Jose took its turn in first by half a point and held on to its lead in the seventh to gain the victory. Once again Mission has proven that their players can finish strong. Weibel placed fourth only one and a half point behind. As expected, Oliver Wu led our players and finished with 5.5 points. As noted earlier, Aaron Hu with a rating 600 points below Oliver was our second place player. In the last round Louis Law fought a player rated much higher than himself to a draw and obtained 4.5 points. The four highest scoring players count for team point no matter how many players on a team. If a team finishes in the top five the four players get plaques. Our final plaque was awarded to Vincent Wang who obtained 3.5 points.
Despite our K-5 Championship Team being seeded eleventh in the country, I truly felt that we had the talent to finish in the top five. We had no heroes but we had a lot of depth. Through most of the tournament, we were in the top five. The bane of Weibel Chess’ existence in recent years, not finishing strong, raised its ugly face again when we dropped our position in the last two rounds and ended tied for ninth place. To be fair our players defeated a number of higher rated players, just not enough of them. While there were not any plaques for our K-5 players, I would like to personally thank all of them for their team spirit. I think this group enjoyed themselves a lot. I am sure some might say too much, but I can’t help but get a warm feeling when a group of students are laughing together while playing chess in the Team Room. They were like comrades in arms. Next year, I hope the comrades in arms hit the target more directly. Our highest rated play Atri Surapaneni (1496) obtained the most points—4.5. Prithvi Nagamanivel (1163), showed he could still play chess as he did in second grade. He destroyed many higher rated players and received 4 points. I think the tension in the delayed flights and Jeremy Chen’s (1423) lack of sleep hit him more than any other Weibel player. We were all incredulous when he lost his first three games. With the help of Demetrius Goins, our onsite coach, he made a comeback winning the next four games. Enya Mistry, another of our players that can play three to four hour games, added 3.5 points to our team. Suryateja Mandadi and Rahul Ravishankar also had 3.5 points in the K-5 tournament.
We tied for fourth in the K-6 Championships. This was a respectable finish. Yet once again we would have been higher if our players had better conditioning to finish off the tournament as strong as they started. The Nationals are grueling event with seven four hour games in three days. There is little doubt in my mind that our elite players and even varsity players need to play longer time controls over two or three days. Most of all they need to attend more tournaments. Every coach wants to put his sport first. I just hope I can get some of the parents to do this. In no other sport do the controlled studies show the academic improvement that studying and playing chess does. I hear all these worries about studying for tests and test scores. Yet, critical thinking developed through chess is a prime mover in education. Having sat on college admissions committees and speaking from the experience of my own boys, becoming a standout chess player will get more attention from most college selection committees than the scores your child received on any Star test. Our two top players, Anthony Zhou (1842) and Serafina Show (1590) both brought 4.5 points to the team score. Shivangi Gupta who I moved up from fifth grade due to her fighting spirit obtained 3.5 points as did Daniel Emmanuel. They all received plaques for their accomplishment.
Fremont’s Gomes Elementary was the winner of the K-6 Championship group. They had been last year’s National K-5 Champions.. Weibel was happy once again to share our Team Room with the Gomes players. I hold a special place in my heart for Gomes since it was the second school I taught at. I left Gomes when I turned Success Chess over to Bela Evans. Gomes, in the years I was there, mirrored Weibel. They had great students who were a pleasure to work with plus loads of parent volunteers. I even held tournaments there and felt as much thrill when they won State Championships as I did when Weibel came out on top. I may have left Gomes in 2005, but my ties remained. Gomes’ number one player, National Expert Joanna Liu (2016) started her chess during her three years at Weibel. She was one of the best students I ever had and telling her parents this inspired them to continue her in chess. Gomes fourth player in their K-6 Championship Team is William Sartorio (1603-now close to 1800) who played and interacted with our coaches at Weibel for two years. I felt honored (I had tears in my eyes) when the Gomes parents asked me to be in a picture with their Team. The other two outstanding players who were part, not only of Gomes’ National Championship team this year, but last year’s as well, were fourth grader Jason Shuhe (1708) and sixth grader Ganesh Murugappan (1835). KUDOS!
We did not have a team in the K-1 Championship section, but I hope to have one next year. Erin Law was the lone player in that section this year.
I want to finish this article on Weibel at the 2014 Elementary School Nationals with a bit of information on other Northern California winners. Balagi Daggupati , a student of Ted Castro and his famous NorCal House of Chess, stood alone in first place in the K-3 National Championships. Northern California has the most amazing group of third grade chess players ever. Seven of the first 15 positions were held by our players: Balaji Daggupati (1919) in first; Maiti Milind (1836) and Andrew Peng (1775) tied for second; Callaghan McCarty-Snead, Chingun Bayaraa (1778), Rishith Susarla (1701) and Oliver Wu(1713) tied for seventh. In K-5 David Pan (1839) tied for second. In K-6, third grade student Andrew Zhang Hong (2038) tied for fifth along with Joanna Liu(2016) and Jason Shuhe Zhang (1708). This was a great year for Northern California players. They continue to show that they are once again a force to be reckoned with.