State Champions!!!

This weekend was the Northern California Scholastic State Championships. What a crazy weekend!

Even though this is my last year at Regnart, this is my first year with an actual team to play with. I won the K-5 Championship section last year, so my Dad and I were considering playing me in a higher section (like High School), but I wanted to play with my new teammates.  In order to all stick together, we decided to play in the appropriate section.  This gave us two choices, play K-5 (which I already won) or play K-6. With two experts and a class B player, our team would be a big favorite in either section. Since my Dad is our team coach, he decided to play us in which ever section looked like it was going to offer tougher competition.  We waited and waited to register, trying to see where the strong players would wind up.  Finally we needed to register, so we entered the K-6 section which looked slightly stronger at the time.  However, as soon as we entered, players started moving to the K-5 section.  Suddenly, the K-5 section looked like it could provide more challenge.  We decided that K-5 now looked like the more interesting section to play, so we moved down a section

Early on Friday afternoon, we went to the convention center to help setup boards for the tournament.  While we were there, my Dad checked the entries one more time. Apparently after we moved down, then players started to move back to K-6.  This was getting ridiculous.  My team now had the #1, #2, and #4 seeds in the K-5 section.  Who were we going to play?  My Dad was getting quite frustrated and finally decided to just go back to K-6 and hope that someone was willing to compete against us.

Friday night, I met my teammates at Ted Castro's NorCal House of Chess to hear a lecture by WGM Jennifer Shahade and play in a simul against her.  My team and my friend Armaan were there along with a bunch of younger kids and their parents.  A couple of stronger adult players showed up, wanting to get into the simul.  For some reason Arun Sharma played the simul, even though i think he is higher rated than Jennifer.  The simul was pretty fun.  Armaan and I gave Jennifer interesting games.  I think she spent more time on Armaan's game than anyone else.  In the end, she was probably better in both of our games, but they would have been challenging endgames to win.  Eventually she offered both of us draws and we gladly accepted.  Udit got a very strong queenside attack going in a Sicilian Defense and actually managed to pull off a win!  Arun and Udit were the only winners and Armaan and I were the only draws.  The rest of the kids all lost their games.  The simul was a lot of fun, but it went much later than we expected and we were all pretty tired.

On Saturday, the tournament started and I was paired against Steven Yuan.  He was only rated in the 1300s, but the game was much tougher than I thought it would be.  I guess you shouldn't judge a player by their rating.  In fact, my teammate, Udit, drew his game against a similarly rated opponent.  Staying up late and then getting up early to watch cricket might have contributed to the draw, but I think he also just underestimated how good the opponent could be.  I did the same thing at Nationals last year and lost in the first round to someone 500 points below me.  Oops!  Fortunately for our team, Pranav and Pramodh took care of business.

In round 2, to add insult to injury, Udit didn't get a pairing and had to settle for a forfeit victory.  What's up with this tournament?  Won't anyone play us?  I got paired against Ashritha Eswaran and had a better game than round 1.  Pranav won again too, and our team opened up a huge lead right out of the gate.

In round 3, I got paired against Anirudh Seela, who we hung out with at Nationals in Florida.  I know Anirudh from chess tournaments, but I think this is the first time we've actually played.  Our whole team won their games in this round.  Pramodh (rated 975) took down his second 1300-rated player of the tournament.  After 3 rounds, I think our team lead was up to 5 points. We practically had the team title wrapped up.

Sunday was sure to bring some more interesting games.  My round 4 pairing was John Canessa who is coached by my friend and training partner, Allan Beilin.  John got into trouble early, playing an opening that I'm pretty familiar with and it looked like it might be new to him.  He fought hard, but he had sacrificed too much material in the beginning to survive.  Udit had his second unexpected draw and Pranav also could only manage a draw.

I was now in clear first, a half-point ahead of the rest of the field. I got paired against Michael Lei Wang, who drew Pranav in the previous round.  I won this game fairly quickly (I was hungry for lunch), and the competition that was a half-point behind drew.  So, I had at least clinched the co-champion title with a round to go.  Our team also had a 4.5 point lead, so there was no way for us to lose the team title either.

In the final round, the craziness began.  I was a full point ahead, so I thought that I would get paired against the highest rated player a point behind.  That would have been my teammate, Udit.  The pairings got posted early for the last round, and my Dad came back to the hall where I was eating lunch and playing blitz games with my coach, Steven Zierk.  My Dad told me that they must have avoided pairing teammates, because I was going to play black against Art Zhao.  I know that Art plays 1. d4, so Steven and I spent a few minutes reviewing my opening, and I headed to the playing hall.  We started playing our games, and after many minutes, the tournament director asked us to stop.  We had played 14 moves of our game.  Apparently Art's parents complained about him having to play against me and got the tournament directory to re-pair the top boards.  Udit's game was already in the endgame, but they basically just made us move and start over with a new opponent. Now I had to play my teammate Udit.  I didn't realize they could just make you stop a game that you were already playing.

I could have just resigned my game to Udit and we'd be co-champions, but that might also let other players like Art and Pranav Nagarajan share first place too.  When I won my first national championship, I was in a similar position and had to play my friend Vignesh.  My Dad and I discussed that game and decided that it was best to play it out, win or lose, so I thought it was probably best in this situation as well.  I got a better position in my game against Udit, and eventually won a pawn.  Even though I was up a pawn, the position was a complicated opposite colored bishop and rook endgame.  Udit offered a draw, but I decided to play on and see if I could win.  After a few more moves, I decided that Udit could probably hold the position and settled for the draw and the Championship.

I was pretty glad to have won the tournament, and it was great to win a team title as well.  Now I'm looking forward to going to Dallas with my team for the Nationals next month!