Illinois was well-represented in three of the four grade-sectioned blitz competitions at SuperNationals VI, held May 11. Land of Lincoln had at least one co-champion in all three.

Stevenson's Alex Bian scored 11.0/12 to tie for first in the K-12 Blitz, taking third on tiebreaks. Alex's only loss came in a split against Bryce Tiglon of Washington who finished just above Bian in tiebreaks.

New York's Nicolas Checa, the highest rated player in the event as a ninth grader, was denied a perfect score with a split against IMSA's George Li. Still, Checa managed to earn the highest tiebreak for the first place hardware in the 236 player competition.

Owing to his fifth-round split and an earlier one, George fell into the 10.0/12 score group, tying for fifth place and earning the highest tiebreak in that group for the fifth place trophy.

Marissa Li, of Naperville North fame, was a half-point back with 9.5, tying for ninth with the higher tiebreak out of two.

Thanks to 9.0's from Nikhil and Akhil Kalghatgi along with Matthew Stevens (all tying for 11th place), and 8.0 from Ricky Roman, Whitney Young won second place honors in the team blitz calculation with 35.0.

Naperville North (32.5), Stevenson (also 32.5), and IMSA (32.0) rounded out the top five in the country.

Harrison Loh (9.0), Richard Zhang (7.0) and Ajay Balaraman (7.0) complemented Marissa's score for Naperville North. Jack Xiao (8.0), Kavin Lavari (7.0) and Shashank Bala (6.5) supplemented Alex's tally for Lincolnshire-based Stevenson. Jonathan Liu (7.5), Shayna Provine (also 7.5) and Cassie Parent (7.0) added to George's posting to give IMSA the fifth-placed trophy.

Hinsdale Central, lead by Zhenguo Mo's 8.0, nabbed 7th place (29.5). Sawyer Harris with 7.5 sparked New Trier of Winnetka to 10th place (27.0), a half-point better than Highland Park which placed 11th with 26.5. HP was paced by 7.0's from Eric Starkman and Zach Warsh.

35 schools had multi-player teams in the K-12 Blitz.

In K-9 Blitz (no, not for dogs), Aydin Turgut won the national title outright with 11.5/12 (Editor's note: not his first title -- but it will take me time to compile how many he has won!).  Even his own father, Tansel, has trouble keeping count: he believes it's at least Aydin's seventh national title -- but says it could be his eighth!

Jason Daniels tied for fifth place with 10.0, placing seventh on tiebreaks. Jason's only losses came against Justin Chen of New York against whom Aydin went 1.5 to 0.5 to earn the championship.

Kevin Ho scored 9.5, tying for 9th place, 11th on tiebreaks.

In the 157-player K-3 Blitz, Dimitar Mardov and William Wang split in the penultimate round to both finish 11.0/12 along with Owen Xuan of Washington. On tiebreaks, Dimitar earned the championship trophy while William took home second place hardware.

The ICA congratulates all the Illinois entries in the side events (including bughouse) who represented the state so well -- and wishes all 350+ of our competitors good luck in the main event beginning today.