1 Abbaraju, Rishik
2 Prabhu, Pranav
3 Sabarish, Shravan
4 Arunkumar, Krithin
5 Hogan, Paul Joseph
6 Daniels, Tate
7 Senthilkumar, Eyal
News
Jonathan Kogen crowned state champion at 2024 Illinois Open State Championship
- Details
- Written by Jacob Plotnick - Editor / Staff Reporter Jacob Plotnick - Editor / Staff Reporter
- Created: 15 September 2024 15 September 2024
The Illinois Chess Association is proud to congratulate Danial Wilson from Wilson Chess and Bill Buklis from King Registration for their amazing job at organizing our 2024 Illinois Open State Championship, at the Doubletree Hotel in Lisle, from August 30, 2024 to September 2, 2024.
The tournament consisted of six sections: Major, Under 2100, Under 1900, Under 1700, Under 1500 and Under 1300. This tournament exceeded previous years with a record of over 250 participants playing, as well as additional players in the scholastic tournament, of which there is a separate article. From there, the Illinois Chess Association wants to thank all the players for playing in the tournament and supporting our organization.
Image of the main playing hall (Regency Ballroom) during the final round. By Abdallah Aldweik
The State Champion title goes to the Illinois resident with the highest point total. The player with the highest point total was Awonder Liang with 6.5 out of 7. Alexander Velikanov tied for second with Jonathan Kogen with 5.5 points. But, because Awonder and Alexander are both not Illinois residents they are not eligible to be the State Champion, therefore Jonathan Kogen is this year's state champion.
Major
Awonder Liang won the section with 6.5 points out of 7. Then, as previously mentioned, Alexander Velikanov and Jonathan Kogen tied for second with 5.5 points. After that, Ochirbat Lkhagvajamts and Spencer Lahmann tied for fourth with 5 points.
Linked here are the top games from the 6th round.
Under 2100
Andrei Skorobogatykh and Aradh Kaur tied for first place with 5.5 points. For third place, four players, Rebecca Cortez, Dario Pjevic, Gurugrahan Gurumoorthi and Gaofei Wang, tied with 5 points.
Under 1900
Adam Walker was the outwrite winner with 6.5/7 points. His only draw came in the last round against Elizabeth Xia who finished uncontested in second with 5.5 points. After that, Amarjargal Ganbaatar and Shivani Manimaran tied for third with 5 points.
Under 1700
In an exciting finish in the U1700 there were two players, Joshua Flores and Nomay Piparia played each other in a tie for first place with 5 points out of 6. They drew and ended up tied for first place with 5.5 out of 7 points. Four other players tied for third with 5 points: Lucas Silverstre, Alex Giris, Christian Walls and Sanjay Advani
Under 1500
Four players tied for first place with 5.5 points: Amy Zhan, Patrick McDonnell, Sean Gao and Jack Witman.
Under 1300
Joseph Rozenblat won outright with 6.5/7 points. Aarnav Sheth finished uncontested in second with 6/7 points. Jim Alop and Anthony Dimonte tied for third place with 5.5 points.
Linked here is a complete cross-table for the event, courtesy of King Registration, and the US rating report.
Once again, we want to congratulate everybody who participated and gave their best in the tournament and to congratulate Wilson Chess and King Registration for running the tournament so smoothly on behalf of the Illinois Chess Association.
2024 Illinois Scholastic Tournament
- Details
- Written by Jacob Plotnick - Editor / Staff Reporter Jacob Plotnick - Editor / Staff Reporter
- Created: 11 September 2024 11 September 2024
The Illinois Chess Association is happy to congratulate Danial Wilson from Wilson Chess and Bill Buklis from King Registration for their amazing job at organizing our Illinois Scholastic Tournament, at the Doubletree Hotel in Lisle last week, on August 31, 2024.
The tournament had three sections: Under 1200, Under 800 and Under 500. Across the entire tournament, there were over 150 players.
With that, the Illinois Chess Association wants to thank all the scholastic players for playing in the tournament and supporting us. Keep up the good work and we hope to see many of you being part of our Warren Scholars program in the future.
Under 1200
Rishik Abbaraju finished as the outright winner in the U1200 section with a perfect 5 out of 5 wins. Coming in a close second, Pranv Prabhu finished outright in second with 4.5/5 points. However, four players tied for third with 4/5 points: Krithin Arunkumar, Paul Hogan, Shravan Sabarish and Tate Daniels.
Rishik proudly holding his first-place trophy
The top seven players received trophies:
Several other players tied for seventh, but did not receive a trophy due to tiebreakers, instead they received a medal for their amazing performance:
8 Senthilkumar, Vidyut
9 Blanka, Daniel
10 Kumar, Eesha
11 Vijayaraghavan, Pradhyum
12 Li, Ethan
Under 800
Sean Pepper was an outright winner with a perfect 5 points. An additional seven players tied for second with 4 points, which are listed below,
Sean proudly holding his first-place trophy
There were trophies awarded to the top seven players:
1 Pepper, Sean
2 Ruhullah, Yaqub Uzair
3 Khanbutaev, Evgenii
4 Jain, Shourya Nirmal
5 Behl, Nina
6 Memon, Essa Ahmed
7 Divekar, Viraj
The following player got a medal instead of a trophy based on tiebreakers:
8 Sendhilkumar, Shivasanjith
Under 500
Similarly to the other sections, George Baron won outright with 5 points. After that, there was a nine-way tie with 4 points, all of whom are listed below,
George proudly holding his first-place trophy
These seven players were awarded trophies:
1 Baron, George
2 Divekar, Vihan
3 Brown, Noah G
4 Wu, Alexander
5 Jiao, Yumu
6 Xie, Vincent
7 Patel, Shoobh
The following players were tied for second place and did not receive a trophy due to tiebreakers. Still, they were all awarded with a medal for their triumphs.
8 Agarwal, Vedansh
9 Lal, Aariyana
10 Dimasacat, Princess Euniece Cabales
We are also proud to congratulate the following players across all sections for increasing their ratings by over 50 points and wish them the best of luck to perform as well in their next tournaments as they did in this one:
U1200:
George Baron
Noah Brown
Vihan Divekar
Yumu Jiao
Vincent Xie
Shoobh Patel
Vedansh Agarwal
Vilok Puppala
Yash Gawas
Shreya Gawas
Joseph Chiang
Mia Chiang
Darren Pinto
Frankie Kirkman
Emilio Villegas
U800:
Rishik Abbaraju
Pranav Prabhu
Daniel Blanka
Vidyut Senthilkumar
Eesha Kumar
Kaiden Gomez
Ansh Jiandani
Arnav Shah
Sahasvath Indla
Akhil Nandakumar
Anya Chakida
U500:
Sean Pepper
Shivasanjith Sendhilkumar
Shourya Jain
Yaqub Ruhullah
Essa Memon
Nina Behl
Evgenii Khanbutaev
Viraj Divdkar
Vedant Sharma
Phani Surikuchi
Angela Rivas
Kellen Shibayama
Krishiv Singh
Ayansh Tata
Suveer Reddivari
Nicole Wishniowski
Lohith Gongati
Aadya Adusumalli
Issac Mendoza
Jaden Livingstone
Aniket Panicker
Linked here is a complete cross-table for the event, courtesy of Wilson Chess, and the US rating report.
Once again, we want to congratulate everybody who participated and gave it their best in the tournament and to congratulate Wilson Chess and King Registration for running the tournament so smoothly on behalf of the Illinois Chess Association.
Illinois Makes a Splash at 2024 US Chess Invitationals
- Details
- Written by Jacob Plotnick - Editor / Staff Reporter Jacob Plotnick - Editor / Staff Reporter
- Created: 02 August 2024 02 August 2024
Just over two months ago, in late May of this year, the Illinois Chess Association ran our Youth and Senior Invitationals – used to determine the strongest player in their respective age section to represent Illinois in the US Open Championship Invitationals. The five players representing Illinois are pictured below: Larry Cohen (Irwin-Senior), Rebecca Corez (Haring-Girls), Avi Kaplan (Denker-High School), Anjaneya Rao (Barber-Grades 6-8) and Aiden Li (Rockefeller-Grades K-5).
From left to right: Rebecca, Larry, Aiden, Anjaneya, and Avi.
In the combined state team category, there was a four-way tie for first between Connecticut, Texas, Illinois, and Arizona. Based on tiebreaks, Illinois was awarded third place. Each player played a total of six games in their respective tournaments, their individual results are below:
Rebecca Cortez scored 3.5 points.
Avi Kaplan scored 5.0 points and finished as co-champion
Anjaneya Rao scored 5.5 points and finished as champion
Aiden Li scored 4.0 points
Larry Cohen scored 3.0 points
Below are the results of all of the teams who tied for first:
Place Code Name Score TBrk[M] TBrk[S] TBrk[C]
1 1-4 CT CT (2167.0) 21.0 72 110.5 78.5
IM Maximillian Lu (2479) 4.5
Jasmine Su (2241) 4.5
Lilianna Gao (1931) 4.5
Lacey Wang (1961) 4.5
Mikhail Koganov (2223) 3.0
2 TX TX (2177.8) 21.0 70 104.5 75
IM Eric Chang Liu (2446) 5.0
FM Sharvesh R Deviprasath (2540) 5.0
Ellery Zhang (1821) 4.0
Oscar Yihang Zhang (1997) 3.5
Scott Alan Elliott (2085) 3.5
3 IL IL (2074.4) 21.0 69 102 75
Anjaneya Sripathy Rao (2205) 5.5
Avi Harrison Kaplan (2319) 5.0
Aiden Linyuan Li (2024) 4.0
Rebecca Cortez (1824) 3.5
Lawrence S Cohen (2000) 3.0
4 AZ AZ (2166.6) 21.0 66 98 73
IM Sandeep Sethuraman (2479) 5.0
Roshan Sethuraman (2223) 4.5
Aishwarya Lakshmi Ganapathy (1844) 4.0
Sharvesh Arul (1959) 4.0
FM Robby Adamson (2328) 3.5
Click here to view the results of all teams who competed.
To help cover fees to travel to the tournament, all scholastic representatives received a $250 travel stipend from the Illinois Chess Association. In addition, Anjaneya Rao received a $5000 scholarship and Avi Kaplan received a $3000 scholarship to the colleges of their choice for their performance in their sections.
The Illinois Chess Association would like to congratulate all of our players for their amazing performance at the Championship Invitationals and extend our greatest appreciation for representing our state at such a great level.
Jeff Smith recognized as TD of year for 2024 by US Chess
- Details
- Written by Jacob Plotnick - Editor / Staff Reporter Jacob Plotnick - Editor / Staff Reporter
- Created: 02 August 2024 02 August 2024
The most memorable part of any chess tournament is a powerful tactic during your game or talking with friends after your games, but none of that would be possible without the careful orchestration and management from tournament directors. These individuals play a vital role in ensuring that tournaments run smoothly, fairly, and efficiently – making them indispensable to the success of any event. Due to their supreme importance, every year at the US Open, one tournament director is awarded the designation as the Tournament Director of the Year.
With that, the Illinois Chess Association would like to congratulate one of our own TD’s – Jeff Smith – who received this prestigious award at the US Open this year. Jeff has worked in over 750 sections across the country since 2005. Beginning in 2007, where he worked the Illinois All Grade, Jeff has been a major part of Illinois Chess. Since 2009 Jeff has worked at many national events, the first of which was the Supernationals of that same year. Just in 2018, Jeff finally became a National Tournament Director. More recently, you may have seen him working at many IHSA and IESA tournaments.
On a personal note, Jeff is an amazing person and an excellent addition to the Illinois and US chess communities, as well as chess as a whole. The ICA is proud to say that this excellent director is one of our own and we are deeply proud of him for receiving this award. This award is well deserved and best of luck to Jeff as he continues to help our great community into the future.
High School Team Victorious in Romania
- Details
- Written by Jacob Plotnick - Editor / Staff Reporter Jacob Plotnick - Editor / Staff Reporter
- Created: 10 July 2024 10 July 2024
Congratulations to the Waubonsie Valley chess team for their victory in the The International School Chess Festival last week from July 2nd to July 6th. Waubonsie Valley sent five players – Anjaneya Rao, Aryan Shrigadi, Arnav Karthikeyan, RIa Raj, and Christan Cheng – as well as their coaches Dr. Mikhail Korenman and Robyn Whitlock.
Nineteen teams, representing seven countries competed at the Festival. Waubonsie went a perfect 8-0 in the tournament, the only team to do so. The team from Israel came in a close second with 7 points followed by Ukraine with 6 points. Here is the final ranking after 8 rounds(for specific information pertaining to each team click on their respective name).
|
Rk. |
SNo |
Team |
Games |
+ |
= |
- |
TB1 |
TB2 |
TB3 |
TB4 |
|
1 |
1 |
8 |
8 |
0 |
0 |
16 |
0,00 |
31 |
123 |
|
|
2 |
2 |
8 |
7 |
0 |
1 |
14 |
0,00 |
25 |
135 |
|
|
3 |
4 |
8 |
6 |
0 |
2 |
12 |
0,00 |
21,5 |
136 |
|
|
4 |
5 |
8 |
5 |
0 |
3 |
10 |
0,00 |
19 |
141 |
|
|
5 |
15 |
8 |
4 |
0 |
4 |
8 |
0,00 |
17,5 |
108,5 |
|
|
6 |
7 |
8 |
4 |
0 |
4 |
8 |
0,00 |
16,5 |
142,5 |
|
|
7 |
11 |
8 |
4 |
0 |
4 |
8 |
0,00 |
16 |
142 |
|
|
8 |
12 |
7 |
3 |
0 |
4 |
8 |
0,00 |
16 |
109 |
|
|
9 |
9 |
8 |
4 |
0 |
4 |
8 |
0,00 |
15 |
143,5 |
|
|
10 |
18 |
6 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
7 |
0,00 |
16 |
88 |
|
|
11 |
10 |
8 |
3 |
1 |
4 |
7 |
0,00 |
13,5 |
117,5 |
|
|
12 |
14 |
7 |
1 |
3 |
3 |
7 |
0,00 |
13,5 |
99 |
|
|
13 |
8 |
4 |
3 |
0 |
1 |
7 |
0,00 |
12 |
73,5 |
|
|
14 |
13 |
7 |
2 |
0 |
5 |
6 |
0,00 |
12 |
105 |
|
|
15 |
6 |
8 |
1 |
4 |
3 |
6 |
0,00 |
10 |
112 |
|
|
16 |
16 |
7 |
1 |
2 |
4 |
6 |
0,00 |
10 |
110 |
|
|
17 |
17 |
7 |
1 |
1 |
5 |
5 |
0,00 |
9,5 |
83,5 |
|
|
18 |
3 |
4 |
0 |
4 |
0 |
5 |
0,00 |
9 |
62,5 |
|
|
19 |
19 |
7 |
0 |
1 |
6 |
3 |
0,00 |
6 |
92 |
On July 4th, the day off the competition, the team participated in Bucharest at the Torch Ceremony for the 100th anniversary of FIDE. It was the first experience for WVHS to play in Europe and the team enjoyed the trip. Dr. Korenman greatly appreciated the families who traveled with students to participate in the event. Pictured below is the WVHS team with FIDE Executive Director GM Victor Bologan.
