Another week at ICA means another Glen Rock Quads event.
This week 45 players across ten sections packed our main room. They ranged in skill from complete rookie to National Master.
Looking around the room I was fascinated by how the age-to-skill correlation wasn’t as high as I expected. One would imagine the lowest-skilled group would be all young kids and the highest would be older adults. That was true to a point, but there were a lot of exceptions along the way.
Consider this photo…
… in which young Aiden Kennedy (right) is a fraction in age of his opponent, Lev Zillbermintz (left). Who in turn is younger than Yefim Treger (center). Not pictured is Anson Leong who I’m pretty sure is even younger than Aiden.
Age is an advantage in chess primarily in that people have more time to practice the game. But as many older players will point out, the game has changed over the years with the rise of online chess, and Twitch and YouTube streamers. This has led to a renaissance of young chess players demonstrating faster increases in rating than one normally saw a generation ago. This particular game was won by Lev, but that doesn’t always happen.
Older players tell me chess is more and more a young person’s game. Quad 1 was won by Ethan Modi, who is.. 18? He can’t be much older than that. So maybe there’s something to that thought.
Thankfully, Ethan shared his second match against Yefim Treger! He cannot recall ever defeating Yefim before today. However, after getting used to his playing style of constantly playing off beat opponents to catch the opponent off-guard, Ethan was able to win the match.
Quad 2 was much more balanced age wise. All four players were young, but very ambitious. One of the players is Juno Moon, who won the section by going undefeated! In addition, Juno shared his final match against Surya along with some commentary:
Here is the game I won against Surya. When he played c4, I planned to transpose it to a Semi-Slav since I had prepared it beforehand. When he played c5 on move 7, I was a bit suspect of his position since the break on e5 was looking especially strong to open up the center and my bishops. When he played f4 on move 12, I immediately started thinking of a game plan to attack his weaker king. After Rf3 on move 19, I thought I had a very convincing attack since both of my bishops were very strong, and with my queen on the H file and my rooks on the center, I was feeling more confident. After Rf1, I found a nice rook sacrifice to win back the material and threaten checkmate on g2 with the queen which he overlooked.
On the other end of the tournament was Quad 10, in which seven novice players went up against each other. This was another interesting combination of skill and age. The group was quite young on average, with Mia Cheung being somewhat older than the others. That age and experience helped lead her to first place. What’s fascinating is that young Guillaume Korelstein was about half her age (and height) and still held her to a draw when they played each other. That draw meant that first place was actually a tie between the two. Age is helpful, but it certainly doesn’t mean everything in chess.
Whether age-related or not, the Glen Rock Quads featured a lot of good chess and high levels of sportsmanship. I was particularly impressed by Yan Haikin (right) and his strong attention to detail and procedure. He had several questions during the tournament (and occasionally interrupted me talking to someone to ask them - haha!), but in the end he made sure everything was done correctly. Kudos to Yan on his meticulous approach to chess. If you ultimately decide you don’t want to play chess, Yan, let me know and I’ll gladly train you as a tournament director. A lot of the best tournament directors got their start when they were young, y’know.
All in all, another fun chess event. Thanks to everyone who attended. We look forward to seeing you again in the future.
Congratulations to all winners: click HERE to view rating reports!
Our next Quads will be held next Saturday, July 8. Click HERE to register!
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