Silver Knights Chess

USCF Rating Report

192 scholastic chessplayers converged on Radnor Middle school for the 2008-9 Greater Philadelphia Scholastic Chess Championships. Pennsylvania state champion NM Peter Minear was on hand to do free analysis for the players, and over 100 total trophies were awarded. Top finishers are shown below.

K-3 Section

1st Praveen Balakrishnan
2nd Jai Narayanan
3rd Maxwell Weinstein
4th Torin Kuehnle
5th Mike Zhang
1st Team Ithan Elementary
2nd Team Skippack Elementary
3rd Team Beaumont Elementary

K-6 Section

1st Chirag Ram
2nd Matthew Lim
3rd Dennis Lee
4th John Stookey
5th Shreya Shetty
1st Team Springton Manor Elementary
2nd Team Murray Avenue School
3rd Team Penn Christian Academy

K-8 Section

1st Kimberly Ding
2nd Christopher Yang
3rd Bharath Jaladi
4th David Lakata
5th Abhinay Dommalapati
1st Team Millstone River Schol
2nd Team Murray Avenue School
3rd Team The Philadelphia School

K-12 Section

1st Rahul Swaminathan (Qualifies for Greater Philadelphia Junior Invitational)
2nd Kunal Lobo
3rd Andrew Ding
4th Kavinayan Sivakumar
5th Austin Henninger
1st Team Pocono Mountain East HS
2nd Team West Windsor-Plainsboro HS South
3rd Team Abington High School

USCF Rating Report

Twenty-six players gathered at the Bryn Mawr Community Center for the third Friday Night Action tournament of 2009. Expert Joe Mucerino went 4-0 to win clear first place after the top two seeds, FM Dan Yeager and NM Peter Minear, drew each other in the last round.

Starting in June, the Friday Night Action tournaments will feature two sections: an open section and an U/1400 section.

Official Results

The weekend of March 6-8, hundreds of scholastic chessplayers converged on Carlisle, PA for the 2009 Pennsylvania Scholastic Chess Championships. Many Silver Knights players were in attendance in the K-3, K-6, and K-6 U/800 sections, including six of the top ten finishers in the K-3 section:

- Benjamin Lu (1st grade; Kutz Elementary) scored 5-0 and finished in a tie for 1st place. Benjamin is also the national 1st grade champion.

- Remi Zheng (1st grade; Jarrettown Elementary) was 4-1 and finished in 4th place. This was only Remi's 2nd chess tournament!

- Kevin Zhou (2nd grade; Galveston Elementary) also went 4-1 to finish in 5th place. Kevin tied for first place at last year's national 2nd grade championship.

- Jacob Guynee (3rd grade; Churchville Elementary) scored 4-1, good for 7th place.

- Praneeth Ramesh (3rd grade; Pickering Valley Elementary) went 4-1 and finished in 8th place.

- Joshua Hagerty (3rd grade; Simmons Elementary) went 4-1 and finished in 10th place.

- A team of four players from Ithan Elementary (Jake Fortay, Jason Hurle, Jacob Calamaro, and Ben Verbofsky) finished in 4th place in the K-3 section, scoring 12.0 team points.

Coach Daniel shows Jason, Jake, Remi, and Remi's sister the Fried Liver Attack. (Jason seems to be more interested in the camera than the chess game...)

Coach Daniel plays a game with Kevin.

Praneeth has an unusual way of preparing himself for a big game. Does this really look like one of the 10 best K-3 chessplayers in the state?

Over President's Day Weekend, a team of four Pennsylvania chessplayers journeyed to Parsippany, NJ to play in the 2009 World Amateur Team Championships. The World Amateur Team is a very popular and well-attended tournament (always over 1,000 players!) where the only rule is that the average rating of each team must be under 2,200. Our team was comprised of FM Rodion Rubenchik (rated about 2340), PA State Champion NM Peter Minear (about 2280), NM Adam Weissbarth (2225), and Daniel Weissbarth (1950).

After a tough third-round loss, we rebounded to win our last three matches and finish 5-1, winning the prize for the top team from Pennsylvania. Below are some pictures from our celebration afterward. Don't forget that you can meet and challenge the state champion, NM Peter Minear, at the upcoming Greater Philadelphia Scholastic Championships on March 21.

Our team (from left, NM Peter Minear, FM Rodion Rubenchik, NM Adam Weissbarth, Daniel Weissbarth)

Daniel ponders the deep complexities of chess...

Rodion studies the famous Aronian-Leko game from his book. No wonder Rodion is so good at chess!

Scott, our bartender.

New this week in our online chess video library:

1) NM Adam Weissbarth analyzes his round 5 game from the U.S. Amateur Team East.

2) NM Weissbarth gives six middlegame tactics problems, along with complete analysis for each.

USCF Rating Report

The State Warm-Up chess tournament, held annually at the end of February to prepare Philadelphia-area chessplayers for the State Championships in early March, drew 82 players from elementary school up through high school. Top-seeded Austin Henninger won his second K-12 Championship section of the year, again going 4-0. Jerry Mangan (Mother of Divine Providence) and Will Culbertson (Devon Prep) finished second and third, respectively, with 3-1 scores. Jerry's performance was notable as he got a very tough draw, playing three of the top four seeds in the event, and was still able to win most of his games and pick up nearly 200 rating points.

In the K-6 U/700 section nearly half the players were unrated, as 29 new chessplayers tested their mettle in competition or the first time. Emerging victorious after four rounds were three players with perfect 4-0 scores: Colin Evans (Springton Manor Elementary), Remi Zheng (Jarrettown Elementary), and Alexander Dornak (Chadds Ford Elementary). Remi's performance was especially impressive as he is only in first grade and had never played in a tournament before! We look forward to seeing Colin, Alexander, and Remi continue to improve as they move up to the championship section in subsequent tournaments.

A close team competition between the host school, Hillside Elementary, Mother of Divine Providence, and Springton Manor ended with a victory for Springton Manor. They clocked in at 13.0 team points for their second straight tournament victory. The only bad news - some of their players are doing so well their ratings will soon be over 700, pushing them up into the Champ section!

We wish all the players good luck at next weekend's State Championships and at the Greater Philadelphia Championships on March 21.

 The three winners of the K-6 U/700 section: Alex (left), Remi (middle), and Colin (right)

Winning a trophy seemed great until the Springton Manor kids had to decide who got to hold it for the picture...

Clayton unleashes the Petroff Defense on an unsuspecting opponent

Brother against sister...