Coming from behind is not something IMSA's George Li has to do often.

George drew Daniel Bronfeyn in the opening match of the Illinois Denker Invitational before finishing strong with four victories.

His 4.5 tally placed the highest-rated high school invitee in clear first place, earning him a spot in the prestigious national Denker competition late this summer in Indianapolis.

Daniel tied for second place with Nicholas Bartochowski with 3.5 scores, drawing head to head in the final round. Nicholas was in clear first place after day one of the competition with 3.0/3, but lost to George in the fourth round.

George reflected on the critical fourth round: "Nicholas was the only participant with a perfect score after the third round, and he had played some exciting games. I wasn't sure what opening to play, and spent all of the previous night thinking about what to do." Ever the strategist, George contemplated playing the b3 Sicilian but "decided over the board that I didn't have enough experience to play it". So 1. e4 was out.

Instead, the IMSA-sophomore had done the advance scouting to recognize Nicholas as a Benoni player, so George steered the game into a London System set up from a 1. Nf3 opening salvo.

Whomever believes a chess game begins with a press of the clock is sorely mistaken!

George observed how times have changed among the top-rated chess juniors in Illinois. "When I won the Barber in 2012, I was the only 2100 and the next highest-rated was only 1800."

In this year's Illinois Denker qualifier field all twelve competitors were Experts or Masters -- with the majority rated over 2100.

Looking back at 2015, George shared, "Though last year's Denker was also strong, it was a (six player) round robin, so I could prepare for each opponent ahead of time. This year, I wasn't afforded such niceties."

Whitney Young teammates Matthew Stevens and Akhil Kalghatgi tied for fourth place, both with 3.0/5's.

The event was played at the Hyatt Schaumburg under the watchful eye of US Chess Senior TD Bill Buklis, concluding May 15.

In the Barber Qualifier, Rockford's Vincent Do had the exact same score pattern as George's with an opening draw and four wins for a 4.5 tally.

Vincent's fifth-round victory came against FM David Peng with both players entering the match 3.5/4, atop the 12-player field. With the loss, David placed third with 3.5/5.

Jacob Furfine placed second with 4.0/5 after drawing David in the fourth round, and Patrick Rao in the first round, but winning his three other matches.

Thus, Vincent will represent Illinois at the national Barber, an honor that had been previously fulfilled by both David and Jacob.

Vincent came into the event as the third-highest rated invitee 200 points less than Jacob and almost 250 points behind David.

Vincent shared that he is excited to represent Illinois in the Barber Tournament of K-8 Champions and promises to be practicing a lot over the summer to assure he does well at the event.

Normal's Jason Daniels placed fourth with 3.0, while a four-pack tied for fifth with 2.5's: Ricky Wang, Bloomington's Ishaar Ganesan, Oak Park's Arthur Xu and Peoria-area's "Sunny" Boya.

In the Girls Invitation, Miranda Liu eviscerated the field, winning all five of her matches with a perfect 5.0/5 result. Her rating surpassed the 2000-mark, up 49 points. As Wednesday is the cut-off for the June rating supplement, it looks like Illinois will have a junior female Expert for the first time in history! 

Shreya Mangalam and Marissa Li tied for second and third places with 2.5 scores.

Miranda earns the right to represent Illinois at the 2016 Girls Invitational in Indianapolis in late July / early August.

Miranda was the nation's seventh-ranked 14 year old girl as of April, but with her 5.5/6 performance at the National All-Girls and this 5.0/5 effort, she may move up into the top four as of June.

Congratulations and good luck to all the Illinois representatives to Indianapolis and thank you to all 30 invitees who made this May 14 and 15 competition so memorable.

And thanks to Jennifer Stevens for providing the results -- and to Jennifer, Hien Do and Scott Daniels for photography (to be posted later).

Complete crosstables -- with tiebreaks -- have now been posted under the ICA Tournaments tab on this site.