Scholastic Chess Camp Week 5 Teaneck Report: 
Stripunsky Wins Themed Practice Game Tournament

With surprisingly low attendance this week we decided to add a new twist to our Simul, and practice game components by incorporating various opening, and variation set ups to see who is adept at understanding particular chess theories and incorporating them in their strategic approach. 

The practice game tournament involved a different start position each day (Monday-Blackburne Shilling Gambit, Tuesday-Traxler counterattack, Wednesday- Fried Liver Attack, Thursday-Boden-Kieseritzky Gambit) and in the end Jane Stripunsky won impressively with 3.5 points including a win against coach David on the final day in the themed Survival in a Simul component (to be fair David was tasked with playing the black side of a Fried Liver attack and having to defend an attack against four decently rated kids who went over two days of theory in that line and had to memorize various opening variations concerning it. So three out of four wins, and a perfect four out of four when David was playing white isn’t too shabby.).  Jane whose dad is of course ICA coach and GM Alex Stripunsky did a great job given the constraints of the event and should be commended for it.

The classical tournament was broken down into two sections and in the higher section, despite being down in two of the games (against Lily, and Jane) Grant Carlson managed to win everything and get first place.  His sister Hana who was down against Andrew Sung (who tied with David Bolshov for second), both on time and on position, set a back rank trap moving her bishop to cut off the escape square that Andrew overlooked and thereby won the second section as well.  The double dose of Carlson meant two trophies would be going to the family (the Carlson’s were brought to camp everyday by their chess coach who lead by example and attended our grandmaster camp as well.)

In the Study groups Lily was the winner for Slava, as she upped her game on the last day to overtake Daniel Klevak (who was leading by one point most of the week) by memorizing all the variations she was tasked to look at during the beginning of the week. Noah was the best student in Ivette’s group while Hana was the winner in David’s.

The best problem solver was Ama Bonsu, while David Bolshov won for best notation (impressive in that he had a hand injury and was still neat and accurate throughout).

We only had two sports groups this week and Daniel Klevak won the older one while Noah won the younger one.

As usual the winning Relay Race team was the Pretty Pink Unicorns (Daniel, Jane Lily). It seems that team wins because the more experienced campers know to pick that name.

The lunch competition was won by Lillian and replaced the healthy lunch since technically that is a competition gauging how much your parents do.  Lillian won the event because she made her own lunch every day of the week which was commendable.

Another new theme (actually we did this a few times before in various years) besides regular team dodgeball (won by Noah) was the dodgeball duels.  The premise is that two players face off one on one with the event a knockout competition with one eventual winner.  Jane Stripunsky again impressed everyone by knocking out Daniel Klevak in the final to win the competition.

Finally, Sharvanya Moola got a prize for her sense of fashion as the best dressed camper.