Silver Knights Chess

New this week in our online chess video library:

1) IM Bryan Smith takes a long look at the Benko Gambit, a popular way for black to play aggressively against 1.d4

2) IM Smith's second lesson of the week is called "The biggest part of finding is looking," and it deals with different ways players can forget to look for tactics that might at first seem simple.

USCF Rating Report

50 chessplayers battled it out at Wayne Elementary School on February 7 at the February Freeze chess tournament.

1st-grader Torin Kuehnle won the K-12 championship section, going 4-0 and defeating the top two seeds in the process. An impressive performance, and Torin will now be rated over 900! Michael Sydnes took second place at 3-1, followed by Clayton Johnson at 2.5-1.5.

In the K-6 U/700 section, Ian Stevens of Penn Christian and Marcello Cesario of Springton Manor both went 4-0, with Ian taking first place on tiebreaks. Ten other students tied for 3rd-12th place at 3-1. Springton Manor won the team prize with a team score of 13 points.

Our next event is a Friday Night Action tournament at the Bryn Mawr Community Center on February 20, and the next scholastic tournament is the State Warm-Up on February 28 at Hillside Elementary School. See you there!

Left: Tournament champion Torin with his trophy
Above: The players at the start of a round
Below: Victorious Springton Manor team with trophy

New this week in our online chess video library:

NM Adam Weissbarth analyzes when you should trade queens. In the second video of the week, another student game is analyzed.

Silver Knights organized three rated events the weekend of January 23 - 25. First up was the Friday Night Action open tournament in Bryn Mawr. FM and top seed Rodion Rubenchik went 4-0 to win first place in the 18-player event, defeating second-seeded NM Peter Minear in the final round. Expert Joe Mucerino scored 3.5/4 to win second place. Frank Jackson went 3-1 to take first under 1800, and Elliott Lueck and Genesis Wentzel tied for the under 1200 prize at 2-2. The goal of the Friday Night Action tournaments is to give stronger junior players the chance to play against adult players in rated games and get exposure to tough competition. We look forward to more of the same at the next Friday Night Action tournament on February 20.

Next was the 60-player Winter Blast scholastic tournament at Wayne Elementary School. Austin Henninger dominated the championship section with a 4-0 score. Patrick Liu and Anthony Ciarlante tied for second place at 3-1. In the K-6 U/700 section, Jeremy Miller of Friends School Haverford and Praneeth Ramesh from Pickering Valley Elementary both went 4-0 to tie for first place. Torin Kuehnle of Friends Select School and Ben Verbofsky from Ithan Elementary scored 3.5-.5 to tie for third place. The race for top school was extremely close between Pickering Valley, Friends School Haverford, Ithan, and Springton Manor. After the dust settled, Friends School Haverford was victorious with a team score of 12 points, besting Springton Manor by 1.5.

Finally, a chess workshop was held on Sunday in Bryn Mawr. Will Culbertson won the four-player round robin by beating the other three players, who each went 1-2. Look for selected games from the workshop to appear in the Online Training Center over the next couple of weeks.

New this week in our online chess video library:

- IM Michael Mulyar analyzes the Austrian Attack in the Pirc Defense. This is an extremely tactical line which is dangerous for both sides, so it's important to be prepared!

- NM Adam Weissbarth shows how to aim for an advantageous endgame, and explains how to use this to play against highly-rated but inexperienced opponents.