Quad weekend at the International Chess Academy continues with our monthly kids’ quad event in Livingston.
Quads, for those of you now in the know, are a popular style of chess tournament. Players are divided into groups of four. The top four players make up Quad 1. The next four highest rated players are Quad 2, and so on. Each quad plays as a round-robin tournament in which all players in the group play each other. Any extra players join the final quad which then runs as a small Swiss tournament. The upside of Quads is that people get to know each other a bit, and the games are usually close in skill. The downside is that quads are heavily disrupted by players who drop out, and last-minute changes in attendance can delay the start of the event.
Today was one of those days when multiple attendance issues beyond our control slowed down the start of the day. Fortunately, everyone was understanding, and after a few minutes of frantically creating new quads, we had the tournament up and running. Kudos to all of you for being such good sports about all this.
Quad 6 was an absolute delight. They are often our youngest and newest players, and as such sometimes have the occasional behavioral issue that goes along with being young. Not today. They were absolute joy. So much so that I’ll call all of them out by name -- Aaron Castenada, Nikilesh Sivakumar, Avik Bodepudi, Arooban Ravichandran, Dylan Tsui, and Harsharva Parthivan Rajasekar.
When we have more than four players, we add a second-place prize. Dylan Tsui and Arooban Ravichandran split the second-place prize, and Harsharva Parthivan Rajasekar won first place.
Quad 5 was an interesting match. Three of the players had ratings in their mid-200s. The fourth, Varunshankar Mutukulloju, was rated 478. Not quite as close as we’d have liked it, but certainly a poor mismatch. The upside of being the highest rated is that one has the best chance of winning a prize. The downside is that one usually takes a rating hit if they don’t win it. So, how’d it turns out?
The always friendly and pleasant Prisha Sampat played hard but didn’t win any of her games. Teddy Hirsch won one of his games but couldn’t make a dent on Varunshankar. Andres Maldonado, who has been doing well in quads events lately, pulled off the win over Varunashankar and clinched the prize for himself. All in all, several well-fought games between all four.
In Quad 4 Aaron Kustanovich took an early lead over the pack with a win over Kevin Zhang while Benjamin Gorenburg and Anish Shrivastava drew each other. Benjamin and Anish each won their second games putting them in the lead with 1.5 points. But in a major reversal of fortune, Aaron and Kevin both won their third games giving Kevin the win with 2.0 points. Again, excellent chess playing and behavior here. I couldn’t be more pleased.
Come to think of it, all seven quads were excellent today. There were some minor rules discussions that required intervention of a tournament director, but no disputes, and certainly nothing that resembled a behavioral issue. So… yeah! This was a great tournament, and everyone seemed to have fun.
In quad 3 ratings are now up to the 500s. Art Bajraktari was our undisputed winner here with three wins in a row. Anish Shrivastava and Benjamin Gorenberg tied for second with 1.5 points each. Kevin Zhang gave it a noble try but did not walk away from the board victoriously today.
(A little food for thought. All three of these players were evenly matched. Against an evenly matched opponent and excluding draws, in chess you win half the time and lose half the time. Meaning in a three-round event, a player will lose all their games 1 in 8 times and win all their games the exact same amount of the time. This holds true regardless of skill level. So, it’s not dishonorable to walk away from the table with no wins. Sometimes that just happens.)
Quad 2 had two battles going on. Aarhaan Rao took an early lead with two wins. Aaron Zhang and Shu Leong were running behind with one win, one loss. And Ruvishka Gupta was playing her hardest but had not won any games. In the final round Ruvishka and Shu went up against each other. Victory went to Ruvishka this time, ending the tournament for boh with 1 point. Arhaan and Aaron played an epic game of their own with Arhaan needing only a draw to win first place. Alas, this day did not go Arhaan’s way, meaning the two tied for first place and would split the cash prize.
Quad 1 was our highest round with four players, more or less around 1000 rating. One withdrew from the tournament after it started due to a schedule conflict. That left three vying for first place: Sanvel Hovsepyan, Daniel Bronstein, and Rishith Bhoopathi. Rishith pulled off a draw against Daniel. Samvel beat Rishith. Daniel beat Samvel and drew Rishith earning himself first place.
All in all, a fun day of quads. A good time was had by all, with lots of chess all around. I don’t really have any memorable stories, good or bad. And for that I’m okay. No news is good news, as my mother used to say.
One thing - my apologies for so few photos. I was bustling around running the tournament and forgot to pull out my camera and take photos. By the time I remembered photos need to be taken there was only one game left between Samvel and Daniel. So I present photos for your enjoyment, with the promise I’ll take more next time.
Visitors: 571