ICA Scholastic Chess Camp Teaneck Location Week 3 Report: 
What’s The Deal With Sanjay Gupta?

You know CNN’s chief medical correspondent?

It seems that during the past week one of our campers named Brian Hong (our best comedian since Shabbi something or other) mentioned that in trying to do certain things (like play chess or dodgeball well) kids should always attempt to do them “Sanjay Gupta style.”   The random nature of such a random joke was so endearing to Slava’s heart that we ran with it so to speak and used it (well Slava used it) at every turn.  Wolf Blitzer, and Fareed Zakaria must be having intense fits of jealousy right about now.

Anyway…

In the regular tournament Isaac defeated all comers in the lowest section to win first place (Yosef “the draw master” Kreyzman could not draw his last round game against the mighty Isaac), while Ben Pyatski used the Petroff Queen trap tactic in a Spanish Berlin Defense position against Kaylie Shelton to win first place in section three.  The section two winner was Mark Gotesman, while in section one Dillon Shelton scored a clutch win in the fourth round to catch Idan Glickman and thereby take the tournament into two extra playoff rounds, and win first in the eventual blitz tie breaks.   

The best students in each group, unsurprisingly were the three tournament winners (i.e. Isaac in Mila’s group, Ben in Slava’s group, Mark in Ilya’s group) and Grant in Solomon’s group.

For problem solving it was a tie between Idan and Sophie in the higher section (both solved about 60+ problems leaving Solomon very impressed) and Yuito in the lower section.

The winners for the simul were Charli Coward in the unrated section, and Zachary Mankowitz in the rated section.

In the sports groups it was (from youngest to oldest age group) Ariel, Dillon, Yosef, and Douglas winning for their ages.

Idan Glickman was the eventual winner in dodgeball, while Abigail Pyatski took our first ever “Nature Exploration” prize.

To no one’s surprise Idan once again led his relay race team (Pretty Pink Unicorns 3.0-Dillon, Yosef, Kaylie)  to victory, while the blitz/bughouse team event was won by Sophie’s team of Zachary, Douglas, and Charli.

Kento was awarded the best behavior prize while Brian was the obvious winner for the funniest joke.

Lastly, but not leastly, we celebrated Miya Shelton’s fifth birthday with “peanut free” cupcakes, sang her the happy birthday song, and gave a Koala bear as a present.  Congrats MIYA!!!!!!!!!!!