This past weekend, almost 60 ICA students competed at the NJ Grade School Championship in Brookdale Community College. For many of our players, this was their first tournament experience outside of our Glen Rock Quads. For other, more experienced players, this was an opportunity to showcase just how much they improved in front of their own peers! Every player that competed represented our school with pride, and this is reflected in the final results: we had at least one representative in the top 10 in every grade level between the First Grade and the Eleventh Grade!

In the First Grade Section, Gillian Gao finished with 4/5 points, giving her the Fourth Place trophy. Also in the top 10, Maxim Lokhov finished with 3.5/5 points, landing him the Eighth Place trophy. In addition, although he is not an official ICA student, we would like to congratulate Abhiram Vasanthavada for finishing in 3rd Place with 4/5 points; his only loss came against the eventual winner! Abhiram competes in the Glen Rock Quads and ICA Progressive Tournaments every time he has a chance to! He credits our quads with giving him "an opportunity to play against others with different strategies and it has helped him learn, grow, and refine his game!" With results like this, it is hard to imagine that Gillian, Max, and Abhiram are only first graders: it is impossible to say just how high their ceilings are!

In the Second Grade Section, we had seven competitors; I am proud to announce that each one of them finished over the 2.5/5 threshold for a medal prize! Moreover, Vincent Lee finished with 4/5 points to claim Fifth Place, and Kian Zarineh also finished with 4/5 points in Seventh Place!

In the Third Grade Section, out of five competitors, four finished over the 2.5/5 point threshold, and two won trophies! Vihaan Rajalbandi finished the day undefeated, with 4.5/5 points to win himself Third Place! Meanwhile, Michael Lokhov finished with 3.5/5 points to finish in Eighth Place and ensure that both Lokhov brothers come home with a trophy!

The Fourth Grade Section in which seven players can proudly go home and say that they gained valuable experience after many played in their first state level tournament! In all, six players finished above the 2.5/5-point threshold, and Yujeong Yeo, a frequent participant in ICA Camps, finished in Second Place!

We are now getting into the sections which were completely dominated by ICA students, both in terms of number of participants and number of trophy winners! In the Fifth Grade Section, we had eight participants, and five finished above the threshold! More impressively, however, was the battle for first place, which was fiercely contested between Bryan Andrei, Geoffrey Chen, and Mark Kogan! Each player won their first three games, meaning it was inevitable that they would have to face each other. And this proved to be the case in round four, with Geoffrey Chen playing white against Bryan Andrei. Geoffrey came out victorious in this battle, meaning he came into the final round with 4/4 points, the same amount as Mark! This meant that they would have to face each other for the title of Fifth Grade Champion. They ended up drawing, meaning that, after tiebreaks, Mark took First Place and Geoffrey took Second Place. Bryan could also leave with his head up high, as he finished in Fourth Place! But that's not all: an honorable mention goes to two frequent Glen Rock Quads participants: Luke Shin finished in Fifth Place, and Ray Chakraborty finished in Eighth Place!

We had another battle for the top in the Sixth Grade Section, with Liam Shah and Leon Shevelenko tied on 3.5 points after four rounds. In all, four players had this total after four rounds, with one of them being frequent quads participant Ari Lukatsky (who drew the final round to finish with 4 points and Second Place!) With Ari drawing, this meant that one of either Liam and Leon could take sole possession of first place with a win. In the end, Leon won, meaning he took First Place! Meanwhile, Liam finished with a very impressive Sixth Place!

In the Seventh Grade Section, five current and former ICA students finished above the threshold, and two won trophies: congratulations to Ido Alkin for winning Fifth Place, Jody Chen for winning Ninth Place, and Thomas Holder for winning Tenth Place!

In the Eighth Grade Section, we had another winner! Congratulations to Angelo Valentino for winning First Place with 4.5/5 points! It is worth noting that he defeated a 1900 rated player and drew a 1700 rated player to claim this title!

We now move on to the high school sections. Congratulations to Bergen County Academies for taking Second Place in the Freshman Team Competition, Third Place in the Sophomore Team Competition, and First Place in the Junior Team Competition!

Statistically, the Freshmen performed the best, winning a combined eleven points from five games! The key player for the team was Arnav Adepu, who took 4/5 points to win Third Place. But full credit must also be given to Goktug Bas, who took 3/5 points to win Ninth Place! Outside of BCA, our best performing player was Jane Stripunsky, who won Fifth Place with 4/5 points!

The key player in the Sophomore section was Albert Abzalimov, who took Eighth Place after winning 3/5 points; congratulations!

But it was the Juniors who brought home the grand prize! Each ICA team member made an equal contribution to the team by winning 3 points out of 5! After tiebreaks, however, Ethan Modi took Fifth Place and Jonathan Zeng took Seventh Place. Outside of BCA, our students, current and former, utterly dominated the section: Justin Lee won First Place with a perfect 5/5 points! Meanwhile, Jessica Lee took Sixth Place with 3 points out of 5 and Ethan Feder took Eight Place also with 3 points.

We only had one Senior compete this weekend. However, that senior, Jacob Feit, would not go home empty handed, as he finished in Ninth Place to claim a trophy!

We are very proud of all section winners from ICA, but we are even more proud of students who played in this event without having much experience at this level! The road to improvement is by repeatedly going through the trial by fire. We are looking forward to seeing everyone at our future events:

The next Glen Rock Quads will be held December 3rd and every week afterwards until the Holiday Break.

The next ICA Progressive Tournament will be held December 11th.

The next ICA Open Championship will be held December 17th.

The next Livingston Quads will be held December 18th.

Our New Years Blitz Tournament will be held December 31st at 12:30 PM!

In addition, we are very happy with the atmosphere the ICA family created at the tournament: just like at the Quads, many of our players were able to group together, and this, according to Alex Kogan, Mark's dad, "helped them not to get bored and tired before the next game." In addition, according to David Milstein (who finished with 3 points out of 5 in Grade 9, winning himself a medal!), "it was nice to see so many familiar faces at the award ceremony. Long may this positive atmosphere grow and thrive!

Happy Thanksgiving to all ICA families!