On Saturday, April 29, 2023, the 2nd Annual JL All-Girls Chess Tournament took place at the International Chess Academy (ICA) in Glen Rock, NJ. Registration for this event was open to all school-aged girls and the number of girls was capped at 30. Girls from the region, including New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, participated in the event. Event organizer and high school student Jessica Lee gave an introductory lecture to chess for beginners. After that, a tournament involving rated and unrated players took place. The goal of the tournament was to promote chess in girls/women, a typically underrepresented group in chess, as well as to address the issues of hunger and need in girls/women. This was the second annual event, with last year’s event held in the Spring of 2022 at the Westfield Chess Club.
But before we discuss this tournament, we must discuss another important all-girls event that coincidentally occurred at the same weekend as this event. Three ICA students participated in the 2023 KCF All-Girls National Championship, which had a total 471 players! Our best performer was Kate Stripunsky, who, in the under 8 years old section, won four games and drew one out of six to finish in 10th place! In addition, Eva Vinokur won two and drew two to finish with 3/6 points in the under 14 years old section, and Anna Radchenko won four to finish in 13th place in the under 16 years old section! Congratulations to all! Now, back to our tournament.
In order to participate in this event, girls were asked to donate a minimum of 5 food/toiletry items in conjunction with a Sodexo Youth Hunger Foundation Grant, with all proceeds being donated to JBWS in Morristown, New Jersey, which is a private, confidential service that helps all survivors of dating, domestic, or partner abuse (and their family members). The top 3 donors of items were awarded a small prize. All participants also received a score book that can be used for notation in future tournaments. The food and toiletry drive was a big success, with over 100 items collected for the food and toiletry drive.
There were two sections of play: unrated and rated. In the unrated section, 7 girls participated. Aadya Pallila took first place with 3 points while Karina Prakash and Evelyn Yoo scored 2 points, tying for second place. There were 16 girls in the rated section. In that section, Gillian Gao took clear first with 3 points while Leah Khoroshevski and Melanie Liang tied for second place with 2.5/3 points.
All the girls did an amazing job participating in this tournament.
Thank you to all who participated and most of all, thank you to Diana and ICA (including Alan and Alessandro) for helping support the tournament!
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