Ahead of an amazing seven-way tie for second place, the team of Jacob Davis and Jason Daniels won the K-8 Bughouse competition with a perfect five-for-five peformance.

The event was held Friday, March 10, ahead of the K-8 Championships kicking off the next day at the Marriott Hotel & Conference Center in Normal.

It took a fifth round victory over the team of Kevin Ho and Aidan Carey to earn the championship, with Ho-Carey earning second place hardware with the highest tiebreaks in the 4.0/5 score group.

Also posting 4.0's were Hoesley-Vincent, (third place), Deligiannis-Kaplan (fourth place), Katam-Sareddy (fifth place), along with Fayn-Platnick, Husarik-Kale and Mehta-Daniels (Alex).

Five-round blitz competition was the initial order of the evening with Jason Daniels also enjoying a five-for-five performance there, with Aria Hoesley, Jacob Davis, Aidan Carey and Ethan Salazar-Sobin posting 4.0's and receiving trophies.

Tejas Katam had the top score for those in Junior High not receiving a top five trophy, Avi Kaplan had the top Elementary score, Adam Elgat received the Upper Primary award and Jack Kerr for Lower Primary -- despite losing all his games -- albeit in style!

First round of the main event begins at 10am Saturday.

Despite a broken water main in Normal -- and the unexpected temporary closing of a hotel were some tournament visitors were staying, the weekend is off to a roaring success!  

Thanks again to the Bloomington Normal Area Scholastic Chess group for their hospitality.

For the first time in memory, the Illinois Chess Association will be hosting a booth at this year's tournament. Come by and say hello!