Early Winter Dr Ostfeld Memorial Scholastic Championships: Record Breaking Turn Out!

The results are in and thanks to all of you we had a record turnout as two hundred and twenty competitors showed up to play at our early winter competition.  As usual section three (the under 800 section) had the most players and it was actually the first time the pairings had to be printed on two pages.

 It seems the creation of a second separate open section, and opening section five to adults has helped create additional interest in our competitions. 

Section one

With twenty-one players total Jonathan Plavnik, and Ilya Asulin shared first place with three-and-a-half points.  On tie-breaks Jonathan claimed first after his last round come from behind victory third place finisher Akshay Nair.  Down a queen Jonathan made a last ditch attempt at a fork to get it back and succeeded after which Akshay conceded a rook and the game itself a little later. Niko Martirossian, Mathew Postoyanets, and AJ Horowitz, also shared third place with three points. 

Section two

With thirty-four players Arjun Jayaswal was the only one to score four points and claimed first place as a result. Lily Goldfarb and Alan Kerdman drew their last round game and shared second and third place respectively.

Section three

With sixty-four total players Brian Hong scored four points and won first place on tie-breaks. Brian put in a lot of effort over the years trying to conquer the third section and his hard work finally paid off.  Sunjay Riener, and John Montgomerie also scored four points and finished in second, and third places respectively. 

Section four

Ethan Xu scored all four points and beat the next three top finishers to claim first place all on his own.  His last round game was especially short as he caught his opponent unaware with the Caro-kann defense.   Mathew Lerman, Nishant Lebaka, Aziz Kodirov, and Jahnavi Patel all scored three points and finished in second through fourth places respectively.

Twenty one kids competed in section four.

Section five

Vijay Veggalam, and Emre Alptuna drew their last round game and thereby claimed the first and second places respectively with three and a half points each.  Roman Brustein, Sante Calandbri, Gabriel Lifshitz, and Ilan Katz all scored three points and tied for third places, while placing third through sixth respectively.  Twenty four people participated in section five.

Thanks to everyone for participating and see you on February 2nd.