National Elementary School Championships Kick Off in Columbus

Almost 1,600 students from grades kindergarten through sixth grade begun their chess-filled weekends on Friday, April 26 in Columbus for the 2024 National Elementary School (NES) Championship. Play continues today, with three rounds. Top boards can be followed on uschess.live all day.

Rows and rows of chess players fill the Greater Columbus Convention Center this weekend (Photo Caroline King)

Plus, tune in to our Twitch at 6:00 p.m. EDT for live commentary on round five from WGM Sabina Foisor and GM Kayden Troff. Learn more about our guest commentators below by reading their My Best Move columns from the Chess Life magazine archives.

Blitz and Bughouse

Well, over 200 of our young chess players got a head start on the weekend, playing in one of the two National Elementary Blitz championships (K-6 or K-3).

In the K-6 section, Washington sixth-grader

The K-6 Blitz Champ: Vihaan Jammalamadaka from Washington (Photo Caroline King)

stormed through the field for a 11½/12 clear-first finish, an entire point-and-a-half ahead of Pennsylvanian fifth-grader Tariq Yue and New York's Elliott Goodrich (also a fifth-grader). Yue took second place over Goodrich on tiebreaks. All three players are still perfect in the main event, as well (with Yue playing 'up' in the K-6' and Goodrich in the K-5).

The K-3 Blitz Champ, Albert Li (Photo Caroline King)

In the K-3 section, the race for the top was closer, with third-grader Albert Li (New Jersey) finishing with an 11/12 score a half-point ahead of New York's Ian Avery Singh (only in second grade). Both players are also sitting on perfect scores in the K-3 after one day of play.

In the Bughouse tournament, held earlier on Thursday, a duo of second-graders took clear first with a 10/12 score. Congratulations to Arizona's Leon Li and Massachusetts's Tommy Kozlek, who are also currently both two-for-two (in the K-3 and K-5 sections, respectively) in the main tournament.

Tommy kozlek (L) and Leon Li are both only in the second grade, but won the K-6 Bughouse tournament (Photo Caroline King)

Guest Grandmasters

A highlight of the NES is the presence of not one but two guest grandmasters hanging all weekend for blitz, bughouse, lectures, and a tandem simul.

Grandmasters Amanov and Krush take turns making moves in Friday's tandem simul (Photos by Caroline King)

Playing against 32 opponents is hard enough when you have to remember your plans on each board. But imagine trying to read another grandmaster's mind! That's what Krush and Amanov did, alternating moves during yesterday's simul. They only yielded one draw, to Minnesota's Krish Mahajan.

The only survivor: Krish Mahajan defended well against the grandmasters' Carlsbad to earn a draw (Photo Caroline King)

In what's quickly becoming the common thread of every player mentioned so far, Mahajan is currently on a 2/2 score in the K-5 section. The game is below:

Krush and Amanov are both taking on all comers once again in blitz today, with Amanov playing from 12:30 to 2:30 and Krush taking over at 2:30. Catch Krush's lecture (with Q&A) before the blitz, at 11:00 a.m., and stick around after for Amanov's lecture (with Q&A) at 4:30. Photos from yesterday's blitz sessions are below:

The guest grandmasters couldn't get enough chess yesterday, with Amanov keeping an eye on Krush's blitz session (Photos by Caroline King)

K-6 Championship

In the K-6 championship, 15 players survived Friday's games with unblemished 2/2 scores. Of these players are three of the four players in this section rated over 2000: the top two from the K-6 Blitz (Yue and Jammalamadaka) and North Carolina's sixth-grader Krishna Rallabandi. Yue's first-round win included some particularly nice tactics:

The biggest upset of the section happened on board four, with Bryant Chen finding a complex variation on a back-rank tactic to score a 550+ point upset:

This section also saw a number of draws on top boards in the evening round. While some were relatively tame, others were wild swings:

K-5 Championship

In the K-5 section, 20 players are still perfect (even though the section has 19 fewer players than the K-6). Of them, Ohio's Sharath Radhakrishnan is the highest rated (and only master).

CM Ethan Guo entered Columbus as the highest-rated player in any section, but Leo Le-Tran's deep London knowledge had him on the ropes (Photo Caroline King)

Noticeably, top-seeded CM Ethan Guo is not among them, having gotten caught up in an opening trap last night and being fortunate to escape with a half-point:

We also saw another massive upset (this one was 557 points, beating out the top K-6 upset by one point). This game is particularly impressive, as Gabriel Fatz did not tactically outplay his opponent (as is often the case in massive upsets), but instead gradually outplayed his opponent strategically and converted the endgame:

K-3 Championship

In the K-3 Championship, 27 players are still perfect with 2/2 scores, including top-seeded Floridian third-graders Yi Sha (1924) and Aakash Jani (1920).

Aakash Jani (Left, front) and Yi Sha (Right, back) still lead the standings after two rounds (Photo Caroline King)

I wanted to conclude this report with Sha's first-round win, as it is a nice "counterpoint" to a number of games here where Black equalized with a well-timed ... c6-c5 pawn break to challenge White's center.

Quick Links

Official website

Results and pairings

Full schedule of events

Top boards on Chess.com

Follow rounds five through seven on Twitch

All Chess Life Online coverage of the 2024 National Scholastics

Use the hashtag #ElemChessChamps on social media to follow the action