It feels like déjà vu all over again...

Dallas was my seventh national championship: four grade-level championships and three elementary championships.  Each one has had its own differences, but there was something vaguely familiar about this one...

Déjà vu #1
After a short round 5 last night, we went to the same steak house that Uncle Darren took me to last time I came to Dallas for nationals.  I had an awesome Buffalo Filet Mignon.  All that protein is powerful brain food.

After five rounds, there were only three players left with a perfect score: myself, #2 seed Roland Feng from Washington, and #4 seed Vignesh Panchanatham (my good friend and training partner from Cupertino).  I'd never played Roland before but I knew he'd be tough.  As a fourth grader he was already the second highest rated in the section.  I first learned about Roland after his amazing performance in Las Vegas back in December.  The filet mignon must have really done the trick, because I won the game in nice fashion.  Vignesh unexpectedly drew his game, so I was the only perfect score going into the final round. 

Déjà vu #2
Last year in Atlanta, I had my worst nationals ever; losing a won game in round 1 against a much lower opponent.  Basically my tournament was over before it ever started.  However, my good friend and fellow Chesspunk, Allan Beilin, found a way to win the K-5 national title.  In round 6 I thought he might have a chance to repeat the performance in K-6.  He faced the newly-minted master, Jeffery Xiong and played a tough 4 hour match. The position reached a theoretical draw, but in extreme time pressure, Allan blundered and lost the game.  The repeat was not to be...

Déjà vu #3
My first elementary school nationals was the Supernationals in Nashville, TN.  I was fortunate enough to win the K-3 section for my first national title.  The victory was bittersweet because I had to face my friend, Vignesh, in the final round.  History has a funny way of repeating itself, and here we were in Dallas, once again playing for the title.  Vignesh and I have played each other many many times.  In our last "serious" game together he beat me.  Also, prior to the nationals, Allan, Vignesh, and I had a little competition and Vignesh kicked my booty.  Needless to say, I was pretty nervous about playing him.  The main thing I had going for me was the half-point lead.  Even though I was playing black, I only needed a draw to secure the title.  This was very much like the situation between Allan and Kesav in the final round of the K-5 nationals last year in Atlanta.

Vignesh knows my playing style very well, so I was also nervous that he would have a special opening prepared for me.  I was a little surprised when he played a drawish line in the French that we both knew quite well and steered the game towards the endgame.  We rattled off our opening moves quickly and soon the game looked to be a draw.  Vignesh could not afford to draw the game and pressed for the win.  Unfortunately for Vignesh, the win wasn't there and he blundered and wound up losing.  It is hard to prepare with your friends and then face them over the board for such a serious game.  Each of us really wanted the win.  The sad thing about the swiss system is that you can go from playing for the title to sixth place in a single game.  In my mind, Vignesh really came in second here in Dallas and in Nashville.

Déjà vu #4
At the grade-level nationals in Florida last December, I won the national title and my friend and classmate, Udit Iyengar, took second place.  Together with Pranav Srihari, we won the team title as well.  I didn't expect so many great things to happen in a single tournament.  Yet, 5 months later, the exact same thing happened again.  Despite an unexpected draw in round 2, Udit buckled down and played tough chess throughout the entire tournament, never giving up.  When the dust settled, he had reached the number 2 spot again, and with Pranav and his brother Pramodh, we won a second team title. Wahoo!

All photos in this post courtesy of Shaun M. Smith from New York's Chess in the Schools

Day 2 is in the Books

What a day, I had three rounds today @ 9:00 a.m.(Ethan Xie), 2:00 p.m. (Ethan Li)  and 7:00 p.m. (Anshul Adve). I was successful in winning all three matches, and now have a perfect 5-0 score.  There are two other players in the section with a perfect score.  Roland Feng from Washington, and good friend Vignesh Panchanatham  from Cupertino, CA.  I will play Roland tomorrow in Round 6, I've never played him before.  Daddy & Lucas arrived right before Round 4 and Mom was thankful because the stress of competition was really getting to her.  She's really not cut out for all the waiting and wondering what's going to happen each round.

Here's a view of the playing hall, with me sitting at Board 1 in front of the room.

I went over to check out my friend Jeffrey Xiong at the top board in the K6 section.

Round 3 opponent, Ethan Xie.

Round 5 opponent, Anshul Adve.

I finished my 5th round quickly, so we got to go to YO Steakhouse for dinner, then straight to bed to get ready for Sunday.

Day 1 is in the books...

Well, day one is done and I managed to win my first two games of the tournament.  Round 1 was a pretty easy game against Reddy Lee from NY's Dalton School.  In round 2, I faced William Sun from Virginia.  I got a better position in the 2nd round and picked up a pawn plus the exchange, but it was still going to be tough to break through, fortunately, my opponent used so much time trying to hold off my attack that he flagged and I didn't have to play a long, drawn out endgame.

Things got off to a bit of a rocky start for Team Regnart.  Udit and Pranav both unexpectedly drew a game today.  Fortunately, Pramodh managed to get a win in the first round, so I think we will be ok.  We are alone in second place, just a half-point behind the leaders, but that team has some very low-rated players, so I know we will pass them tomorrow.  The real question is what will the teams that are just behind us do tomorrow.

Besides the unfortunate draw for Udit, the Chesspunks are representing the Bay Area well.  Allan, Kesav, Vignesh and I are all 2.0/2.0.  Things will get interesting tomorrow: busy day with 3 more rounds.  If I can win the first two, I should get a very strong opponent for round 5.

Dallas here we come!

This weekend is the 2011 National Elementary Championship in Dallas, Texas.  Team Regnart will be there and competing in the K-5 section.  You can follow our progress right here on the blog/twitter and get complete results at the USCF website.

Go Roadrunners!

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!

National Champions!!!

Coming into round 6, there were only three players left with a perfect storm: Michael Chen from Michigan, Udit and myself.  I got paired against Michael and Udit had to play the highest rated person a half-point below, Tommy He.  I got a good position out of the opening against Michael and I was able to use this advantage to generate a strong attack and force through a win.  Unfortunately, Udit made a mistake in the late-opening/early-middlegame and found himself in a lot of trouble very quickly.  The pressure proved to be too much and he lost an uncharacteristically short game to Tommy.

 That left just me with a perfect score after 6 rounds, and Tommy was the only player trailing by a half-point.  I would face Tommy for the 4th time.  Tommy and I recently played at the World Youth in Greece and I squandered a completely winning position, so I was eager to get a chance to play him again.  Both Tommy and I had played white in the previous two rounds, so one of us was going to get three consecutive whites in a row.  Turns out it was Tommy, but I still had draw odds to win the whole tournament.  In the game, I made a mistake early and went down a pawn, but I was able to fight my way back into the game.  At one point I was probably winning, but I knew that I only needed a draw to become National Champion, so I made sure that I wasn't going to lose.  Tommy fought hard, knowing that a draw wouldn't get him the title, but in the end the position was a clear draw and I became the champion.

 Udit won his final game to finish with a score of 6.0/7.0 to tie for second place.  He had the best tiebreaks of the all of the 6.0s, so he got the second place trophy!  Here is a shot of Udit and I with our first and second place trophies.

 For most of my "chess career", I've been the only serious chess player at Regnart.  That all changed last year when Pranav moved from New Jersey.  We still didn't have enough players to make a team, but at least I wasn't the only tournament chess player at the school.  This year, Udit moved to my neighborhood and he goes to Regnart.  Now we finally had the makings of a real team.  My dad started an official chess team at the school, and this nationals was our first tournament together.  Pranav, his brother, Pramodh, Udit, and I all came to play in the tournament.  All of us played exceptionally well and in the end, Regnart won the team competition for grade 5!  In this photo, we are showing off our cool new team shirts and our new "hardware".  Having a team really added something new to the whole competition.  I was still trying to do my best, but I also wanted the team to do well too.

The Bay Area was well represented at this year's Nationals.  Josiah Steerman won in 2nd grade.  Udit and I got second and first in 5th grade.  Pranav tied for 12th.  Kesav was co-champion in 6th grade and got the second place trophy on tiebreaks.  Allan took home the sixth place trophy in that same section.  Anirudh and Pramodh also had strong results in the fourth grade section.

 After it was all done a group of Bay Area kids and their parents went to Downtown Disney to play at DisneyQuest and have a celebratory dinner at Wolfgang Puck's Cafe.  It was a lot of fun to hang out with everyone and finally get a chance to relax.

Our flight home didn't leave until the late afternoon.  That meant we had about a half-day to play at Disney.  Despite the late night celebration with our friends, we got up early, packed our stuff, and headed off to Disney's Animal Kingdom for a breakfast. The food was really good and lots of characters came to our table to visit.  My mom took this picture of my brother and I with Mickey.  After breakfast we had a chance to explore the park for a few hours and ride lots of cool rides.  What a great way to end the trip!

A long day 2

Day 2 of the nationals is always a tough day because you have to play 3 games in one day and the last game, round 5, is usually against a very tough opponent. This year was no different.

After my scare yesterday in the 2nd round, it was important to bounce back with a strong game.  I got a good position early against Prateek Pinisetti of Arizona.  I was able to convert the win and keep my win streak alive.  Udit also won his game. The most impressive feat was Pranav's draw against the tough William Graif of New York.  This draw could be critical, as William also has a strong team in the section.

Often times when I go to chess tournaments, it is just me and my dad, but this time my mom and little brother, Lucas, also came.  Lucas gets to go and play at all of the Disney parks while I do chess, but he took some time out to wish me good luck and see me get an award.

Prior to the start of the fourth round, they announced the Trophies Plus All-American Team.  I was named to the team for the second year in a row.  This is a nice award for some of the top kids in the country.  They gave us a very nice plaque and a jacket with our name on it.  I was pretty happy to make the team again because I lost last year's jacket.

 In the fourth round, I had to play Noah Fields of Washington.  I met Noah and his family a couple of years ago and Nationals and he even came down to Mechanics Institute in SF one time for a tournament.  I knew this game would be tough because WA kids tend to be underrated.  I was able to get a better position in the game and force through a win.  My teammates Udit and Pranav also won to extend our team's lead.

In the fifth round, I faced James Wei from Illinois.  James is a teammate of Alex Bian and Conrad Oberhaus.  Conrad couldn't make it to this year's nationals, so their team only has two players, but they will definitely be a force to contend with in the spring.  James and I played a long game, but I got a comfortable position early and felt that I had the upper hand throughout.  The game ended with a funny checkmate.  My teammate, Udit, took out the #2 seed, Andrew Tang.  Unfortunately, Pranav was not able to pull out a victory against his opponent.  Our team still has a 1.5 point lead in the section.  Meanwhile, the top board, Tommy He, drew, so there are only three of us left with a perfect 5.0/5.0  Tomorrow I will play Michael Chen from Michigan and Udit will have to face Tommy.  Round 6 will be very critical for our team and individual title chances.