The second round of the booster section was full of lessons, one of which included the importance of king castling for our young students. 3/5 games featured some king trouble in the center of the board, and Anooshka and Dylan`s game had quite a spectacular king walk. Anooshka was able to chase Dylan`s uncastled king all around the board, even while down on material. Another great lesson was the importance of pieces working together, from a move as Abhiram`s queen and helper mate in his game against Veda, to Zephaniah`s use of two minor pieces and a rook to secure a checkmate against Abhirv in the late middle game. Even while down 21 total points, Michael did not give up in his game against Kevin, and sprung a surprise bishop checkmate on his opponent in the early endgame. 

In the third round the booster section reinforced some of their earlier ideas, as Abhiram checkmated Abhirv with a queen and helper mate, and Anooshka was able to win out with a  similar rook and minor piece checkmate against Lando. Zephaniah`s checkmate against Michael featured an especially beautiful queen and bishop mate, as the two pieces reached across the whole board to deliver the final blow to the black king. 

One of the games that stuck out to me in the final round was Veda and Kevin`s match. The two battled it out in the middle, before Veda`s rook and queen were able to infiltrate the seventh rank, showing just how powerful those laterally moving pieces really are on the second and seventh ranks. Veda was able to checkmate with the rook and queen on move 23 of a rapidly evolving game.

Today the Steppingstone 5 section was quite competitive with 15 total participants. We were missing one student to make this an odd number unfortunately, and we request that you please notify us if you cannot make it to the tournament in the future. Anyways let`s go to the exciting results: In First place was Jayden Ma with a perfect score of 4/4! We had a three way tie for 2nd place between Achyut Manoj, Nikhil Dhaman Maradana, and Sean Vandalovsky. All four of these boys achieved their 2nd norm and will be awarded with category 5 certificate, Congrats!!

Also congratulations to Luka Kivich and Derin Unluer who each scored 2.5 points and are very close to getting their 1^st (Derin) and 2^nd (Luka) norm. We hope to see you all at the next Sunday tournament in June!

With just four participants the requirement to get category 4 norm was to win all 3 games! Saanvi was very close with two out of two before the final round, but lost the battle to Avyay. Each (Saanvi and Avyay) scored 2 out of 3 points and tied for 1^st place. Better luck next time!

TD NOTE  *** Thank you all for playing! The next event will be on June 5

If you have any questions about where or what to register for, please email us at chessdirector@icanj.net and we`ll get back to you as soon as possible! Thanks***