K-12 Grades: Pivotal Pairings Set for Championship Sunday

Editor's note: This article has been updated with photographs from the top boards of each section.

The triple-round day is in the books at the 2024 K-12 Grade National Championships in National Harbor, Maryland. With only two rounds to go, we are hours away from crowning our next set of national champions for all 13 grades.

Several sections are already out of players with perfect scores, with many more having only one or two remaining. Only the first-grade section has more than three perfect scores remaining. And that’s not to mention the team standings, where some sections feature multiple teams tied at the top and several others see only a half-point of separation.

Photo by Caroline King

But even in those sections where one team leads by several points, remember that team scores are tabulated by adding together each team’s top three scores. This means players who don’t even count toward a team’s current standings can end up helping their school leapfrog over others with victories today.

Below, we briefly break down the standings entering round six. Both of today’s rounds will be streamed live on our Twitch channel with commentary from WGM Sabina Foisor and NM Robert Ramirez.

12th Grade

No perfect scores remain, with FM Avi Kaplan leading the quartet of players with 4½/5. Kaplan yielded a draw to New York’s Kiren Nasta in round four, but defeated the last-remaining player with a perfect score (another New Yorker: Toshinori Underwood) in a complex game last night:

Kaplan plays Virginia’s Arnav Gupta on board one, while Gupta’s Thomas Jefferson High School (TJHS) teammate Aarush Vinod plays Californian IM Ming Lu on board two.

Avi Kaplan (R) rejoined the leaders after defeating Toshinori Underwood in round 5 (Photo by Caroline King)

It should not be surprising that TJHS leads the team standings, considering two-thirds of their top scorers are part of the four-way tie for first place! Their 12/15 score is a full two points ahead of New York’s Hunter College Campus School and Stuyvesant High School, which are each tied for second with 10/15.

11th Grade

Pennsylvanian IM Evan Park and TJHS’s Kent Slate are the lone remaining perfect scores, and it will be Slate – Park this morning. New York’s IM Liran Zhou is the only player with 4½/5.

It’s a tight race in the team standings, with Florida’s American Heritage Plantation School leading with 12/15 thanks to a trio of players each on 4/5 scores. Stuyvesant and TJHS are tied for second, only a half-point behind the leaders.

10th Grade

Massachusetts’s Eric Feng and Pennsylvania’s IM Erick Zhao are the lone 5/5 players in the 10th grade section, and Zhao will have the white pieces in this morning’s head-to-head encounter.

Erick Zhou (L) and Eric Feng will face off on the top board today in the 10th grade section (Photos by Caroline King)

Two players sit on 4½/5: New York’s WIM Chloe Gaw and Florida’s Abhiram Sai Pothuri. The pair drew their fifth-round game last night.

Chloe Gaw is a half-point behind the leaders in the 10th grade section, and her fourth-round upset win was one of Saturday's best games of the day (Photo by Caroline King)

Gaw’s fourth-round win over Californian FM Sihan Tao is below:

Pothuri’s The Frazer School leads the team standings with 12/15, a half-point ahead of New York’s Columbia Grammar & Prep School (CGPS).

9th Grade

Three players remain undefeated in the 9th grade section: FM Isaac Wang (CA), Will Moorhouse (VA), and CM Nikash Vemparala (WA). Moorhouse takes the white pieces against Wang this morning.

This section also featured perhaps my favorite game of day two, where Vemparala upset IM Eric Chang Liu in the last game to finish in round five. Vemparala and Liu were National Middle School Co-Champions this past May, where Vemparala held Liu to a draw and bested him on tiebreakers to claim first place. Presumably, Liu would be out for vengeance, and the resulting game was hard-fought to the very end:

Four teams are tied for first with 10/15 scores. In tiebreak order, we have a trio of New York schools (Stuyvesant, Hunter College Campus School, and Success Academy Liberal Arts) ahead of Charlotte, North Carolina’s Ardrey Kell High School.

8th Grade

CM Yiding Lu leads all scorers with 5/5, but has the black pieces against higher-rated CM Nitesh Cherukuri in this morning’s round. Cherukuri leads a quartet of players with 4½/5 scores.

Washington's Yiding Lu (R) is in sole first with 5/5 in the 8th grade section (Photo by Caroline King)

Speyer Legacy School leads the team standings with 12½/15, a half-point ahead of New Jersey’s Millburn Middle School.

7th Grade

Three players are still unblemished with 5/5 scores in the 7th grade section: FM Bryan Enming Lin (NY), Shriyan Vuyyuru (TX), and WCM Arabella Fang (NY). The top board this morning features Vuyyuru as White against Lin.

Shriyan Vuyyuru (L) and Bryan Enming Lin are two of the remaining three perfect scores in the 7th grade section (Photos by Caroline King)

In the team standings, it should be no surprise to see Lin and Fang’s Hunter College Campus School in clear first, with a 14/15 score. The closest competition are a pair of fellow New York schools (Tag Young Scholars and Speyer Legacy School) each with 11/15 scores.

6th Grade

Nobody’s perfect in the sixth grade section! Five players lead the standings with 4½/5, with CM Kyle Qiyu Dong being the highest rated.

Kyle Qiyu Dong leads a pack of five players with 4½/5, and an additional 23 players trail the leaders by a half-point (Photo by Caroline King)

It should also be noted that CM Sharath Radhakrishnan is currently on track for a “Swiss Gambit,” having won four in a row after a first-round loss. Radhakrishnan leads a pack of twenty-three players trailing the leading quintet by a half-point. Needless to say, this section seems particularly wide-open.

You have to scroll all the way down to 12th place in the team standings to find a non-New York school in this section! Dalton (12½/15) currently leads Speyer Legacy School by a half-point, and Tag Young Scholars sits in third with 11/15.

5th Grade

Speyer Legacy School’s Lucas Yang is the lone fifth grader with a 5/5 score, and currently has the black pieces against the K-6 Blitz Champion Ariv Debmisra. With draws on the top two boards last night, Yang is one of the few leaders who currently remains not pictured.

Of the eight players trailing Yang by a half-point are two of his Speyer teammates (Lev Shangin and Raza Mikal Patel). This gives Speyer a 14/15 team score, a full point-and-a-half ahead fellow NYC school PS 77 – Lower Lab.

4th Grade

Three perfect scores remain in among the fourth graders, with North Carolina’s Yang Yu playing as White against Texas’s Srihas Sai Sarvesh Maddipati on the top board. New Jersey’s Jaden Li is the “odd player out,” and has the white pieces against Florida’s Aakash Jani (the top-rated player out of the half-dozen with 4½/5).

Yang Yu (L, against Nicole Yu) and Srihas Sai Sarvesh Maddipati are two of the leaders in the fourth grade section (Photos by Caroline King)

With a 12½/15 score, Jani’s Oak Hall leads New York’s PS 130 K’s The Parkside School by a half-point in the team standings. PS 77 – Lower Lab School is in third, a half-point behind PS 130.

3rd Grade

Only two perfect scores remain in the 3rd grade section, with New York’s Ian Avery Singh currently squaring off as White against Virginia’s Lukas LeBakken on the top board.

Lukas Lebakken is one of two remaining perfect scores in the 3rd grade section (Photo by Caroline King)

Singh and WCM Abigail Zhou (4½/5) are the top-scorers for section-leading Speyer Legacy School, Their 13½/15 score is a full three-and-a-half points ahead of the closest competition.

2nd Grade

Three perfect scores remain among the second graders. On board one, New York’s Winston Ruiying Chen has the white pieces against California’s Renae Chen. New York’s Charles Bernstein is the third player with 5/5, and Bernstein plays as White against New York’s Darren Wu, who entered the tournament as the section’s highest-rated player.

Lebakken looks on as Mustafa Muhammad (L) held Darren Wu to a draw on the top board of the 2nd grade section (Photo by Caroline King)

Wu’s Elizabeth M. Baker Elementary School currently leads all teams with a 10½/15 score. A quartet of schools sit a half-point back: Dalton, PS 77 – Lower Lab, Great Neck Lakeville and Florida’s Oak Hall.

1st Grade

The 1st grade section is the only one with a four perfect scores remaining. New York’s Yicheng Zhen plays as White against California’s Matthew Wang on board one, and it’s an intra-New York battle on board two between Benjamin Abramowitz and Irene Lin.

On board one of the 1st grade section, Yicheng Zhang (L) defeated top-seeded Mehmet Yilanli in a 712-point upset in round five. Irene Lin (R) boasted her own 350-point upset over Druv Balamurgan on board two. (Photos Caroline King)

On board one of the 1st grade section, Yicheng Zhang (L) defeated top-seeded Mehmet Yilanli in a 712-point upset in round five. Irene Lin (R) boasted her own 350-point upset over Druv Balamurgan on board two. (Photos Caroline King)

Dalton and Oak Hall are tied atop the team standings with 11/15 scores. Curiously, none of the individual players with 5/5 scores are on either of these teams, speaking to the depth of this section.

Kindergarten

Finally, New Yorkers Francis Zhou and Aidan Wang are the last unblemished players remaining in the kindergarten section.