It took perfect scores to win both sections of the 2014 Labor Day Scholastic, held August 30 in Northbrook. 63 players competed in the five-round Quick-Rated event, organized by Chess For Life at the site of the 2014 Illnois Open.

The Illinois Chess Association received a generous portion of the event proceeds. Results can viewed in tiebreak order here and in pre-event rating order here. 

In the Under 1200 section, Micah Hill prevailed head-to-head over previously undefeated Evan Liu to earn top honors. All of Evan's opponents on the day had plus-scores (3.0 or better) giving him the top tiebreak of four 4.0 scorers to place second. 

Micah raised his USCF Quick Rating 162 points to 1165 while Evan went up 114 points to 1105. 

Pranav Iyer, Nicholas Ladan and Nicholas Bruha all compiled 4.0 scores finishing third through fifth respetively. Anton Schuster had the lone 3.5 tally to earn the sixth place trophy. 

Seven players wound up at 3.0/5, tying for 7th-place. On tie-breaks, Rahul Ravisundar placed 7th, Alex Zhao was 8th. Kamal Sureshkumar placed 9th and Kevin Song earned 10th.

Others in the 3.0 score group included Eli Elterman, Matthew Blanton and Mengzhu Cai.

Kamal had the top score for U800 players in the top section, Menghzshu had the top score for U600 players.

In the 34-player Under 700 section, Nathan Frommelt posted the lone perfect score. Along the way, Nathan defeated three of the top eight finishers, enhancing his quick-rating 167 points.  

Three players tied for second place in the section, On tiebreaks, Cooper Evans placed second, Carl Kash was third, and Chris Von Hoff earned fourth. 

A quartet tied for fifth place at 3.5/5. Casimir Kash had the top tiebreak to earn the fifth place trophy.

Also at 3.5, Charlie Tiemeyer earned sixth, Rees Clark placed seventh and Ethan Ding claimed eighth. Rees had the top score for Under 600 entrants.

Nine players tallied 3.0/5, but alas only two trophies were available for this score group (for a total of 10 trophies in the section).

Nonethless, all nine earned a "Top 10" tie, in this case for 9th place. Winning the actual 9th place trophy was Nathan Caropreso while 10th place was nabbed by Jaden Souza.

Not quite earning hardware but still finishing in that 3.0 scoregroup were Daniel Skeels, Trevor Reenan, David Leung, Christine Leung, Bernadet Schwegel, Layla Rodriguez and Timonthy Noginsky

Trevor had the top tally for U400 players while Nathan (Caropreso), David and Daniel had the top Under 500 scores.

With a 2.0 result, six players had the best U300 tally: Roman Kash, Benedict Schwegel, Yana Kapoor, Saanvi Adusumalli, Adam Ozsvath and Truman Evans.

Yana and Truman also had the top U200 scores.