ICA Scholastic Summer Camp Teaneck Report Week 7; Moshe Trapedo “OutCaruanas” the Man who “OutCaruanaed” Caruana!

 

Unquestionably, the biggest highlight of the week came when our new coach Sean Finn was tasked with regaling the kids of his huge upset simul victory against then 2800 rated Super GM and second (third currently) best player in the world GM Fabiano Caruana. Sean explained that even though he messed up early and “could have” resigned, he didn’t (!), and as Caruana instinctively ignored a won game and concentrated on other simul opponents Sean caught his mistake, sacrificed a queen and came out the winner against a Super GM. 

99 times out of 100 playing a lost game may lose, but once in a while people play on in lost positions and don’t regret that decision.

The moral of the story being, if a Super GM can blunder a won position, or game, isn’t it likely a lesser player can do the same?

An hour or so after this story was told to the kids Moshe Trapedo was playing alongside other campers against Sean in our “survival in a simul” competition, and while he does have a tendency to resign lost positions, Moshe played this one out until the end, and with all sorts of blunders being made all around him offered coach Sean his last rook as a token delay sacrifice.  Sean distracted by the lack of quality moves accepted the rook only to realize the resulting position is Stalemate!!! Thereby Moshe claims the best single game result (a rating difference of 1500 points!) of his young chess career, and Sean takes pride in knowing his lesson on not giving up REALLY paid off.

Our tournament winners this week were Kevin Wei in section one (Kevin beat out Moshe in the last round of the tournament), Boaz, and Noah in section two (both scored four out of five points), and Kento Giraldo in section three (he won all three games).

The best students in each group were: Moshe Trapedo in Slava’s group, Ezra Landa in Sean’s group, and Kento Giraldo in Ivette’s group, and Elan Landa in Won’s group.

Emery Brower took home the problem solving prize, while Ved Jethani won for notation.  As we mentioned Moshe Trapedo was the winner for the rated simul section, with Nanaama Bonsu taking the prize for the unrated section.

The blitz/bughouse winners were the team called the “Landa Banda” which was comprised of brothers Jakob, Ezra, and Elan Landa.

Outside in the sports events the winners in the sports groups (youngest to oldest) were Elan Landa, Moshe Trapedo, and Noah Abrahams.  The relay race winners were “I Don’t Know” which was a team led by Noah Abrahams, and including teammates Elan Landa, and Kevin Wei.

Moshe Trapedo was also the winner for dodgeball, while Sam Passner won our trivia contest, and Roen Kane, and Anahit Melkumov won for art.