With a flawless 5-for-5 performance, Rahul Ravisundar won the 2016 Labor Day Scholastic U1200 with 24 participants. The event was held September 3 in conjunction with the Illinois Open occuring in Northbrook.

In the U700 section, Advaith Kodipparambil posted the high score.

In the upper section, a three-way tie for second place included Jonathan Lou, Kai Dubauskas and Pranay Prabhakar, all with 4.0's. On tiebreaks, Kai took second and Jonathan third. 

Ravisundar defeated Kai in the final match and Jonathan in the penultimate round.

Charlie Tiemeyer and Catherine Liu tied for fifth place with 3.5's, with Charlie nabbing the actual fifth place trophy, Catherine earning sixth.

Layla Rodriguez topped the four-pack with 3.0's, earning seventh place.

Also with 3.0, Pranav Addepalli, Daniel Roman and Dimit Deligiannis won eighth place through tenth place trophies.

In the 20-player Under 700 competition Advaith Kodipparambil posted four wins and a draw. The Fox Valley Chess Club member's 4.5/5 was good enough for the section championship. 

Amar Gupta and David Liu tied for second place with 4.0's, with Amar earning the second place trophy on tiebreaks.

Advik Lalam and Samanyu Misra earned 3.5's, tying for 4th place with Advik earning the slightly better trophy.

A four-way tie for sixth place featured Celina Wang, Sam Christos, George Ivascu and Amir Alsakaji, all with 3.0's. Celina earned the top tiebreak.

Sam Kokos rounded out the trophy winners in the U700 with 2.5 points, placing 10th.

For Amar and Sam, it was their very first US Chess rated event.

The event featured Game/25 time controls with no delay feature so it impacted only USCF Quick Ratings and not Regular ratings.

The event was sponsored by Chess for Life and was flawlessly directed by NTD's Tim Just and Wayne Clark, authors of "My Opponent is Eating a Doughnut", a book filled with entertaining anecdotes from the chess tournament trenches. Perhaps one or two incidents from this tournament will find their way into the sequel, although most likely the names would be changed to protect the guilty.