Photo Report: Assorted Medalists

This page features every photo we have, so far, from any of the awards ceremonies at SuperNationals VIII. These photos are categorized and tagged to the best of our ability, but that still leaves many top finishers without photos and many photos without identifications. The below text explains more about why this is the case.

You're invited to email Click here to show email address with any relevant photos and identifications, and we will happily continue to update this page. Keep an eye out for more general tournament photos on our Facebook page.

Jump to: Blitz Winners | Bughouse Winners | K-12 Winners | K-8 Winners | K-6 and K-5 Winners | K-3 and K-1 Winners

With over 4,500 players competing in SuperNationals VIII earlier this month in Orlando, Chess Life Online's goal is to supplement social and print coverage of the event as effectively as possible. This includes both previous reporting, two ongoing puzzle highlight series (both available here), and replays of WGM Sabina Foisor's commentary.

But, what about the photos? Anybody competing in Orlando noticed a couple different photographers floating through the wings, capturing action shots from the entire hall along with profile shots of the top boards. This generated hundreds of fabulous photos, and I'm not being hyperbolic; this process generated many thousands of photos, and hundreds of them were fantastic. It would be a shame to not share them widely, especially with our guest grandmasters making appearances to help crown our winners.

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And the winning K-12 Blitz Team is ... GM Awonder Liang?! (Photo by Photography in Motion)

And don't get us started on the awards ceremonies! Our brave photographers were in the trenches right along a host of proud parents, snapping away. Enter many, many more photos. While the main reports focus on the top finishers of the Championship sections, many players who won a medal (and teams who won a trophy) got to have that moment documented, and we want to share it. 

I have to fight elbow to elbow with those #ChessMoms just to get a shot! 😁 pic.twitter.com/G2XFJnfCgc

— David Llada ♞ (@davidllada) May 12, 2025

So, what is the best way to share these photos — and the spirit of SuperNationals they capture — with the players, their families, and a general chess-loving population? Through a variety of channels! We will share photos of medal- and trophy-winners here, and we plan to add more photos from throughout the weekend to our Facebook page in the form of galleries. We will also be launching a Flickr page, which will also serve as a home for even more photos from this, and future, events.

Before, we begin, there is an even more difficult question: how do we accurately tag, i.e., identify, the subjects of these photos? This is not so tough for composed shots of top boards, but we don't always have the board number as reference of every "action" shot, and, despite our best efforts, we were not able to keep up with the pace of the awards ceremonies and documenting who, exactly, finished in what place. 

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In the background of this photo of Samanyu Alluri with his second-place medal for the K-3 Blitz, K-3 Blitz Champion Ian Avery Singh is mocking me for thinking I could organize and identify all the players in these photos. (Photo by Photography in Motion)

With the side event ceremonies held right before the rounds, and the main ones held in overlapping playing halls, we were not (despite our best efforts) able to get a photographer to every second of every awards ceremony. Add to that the number of players who missed their between-round ceremonies while finishing up some last-minute prep and the even larger number of players who had places to be and planes/buses to catch after the final round, and it's far from guaranteed that every player in a given section could even pick up their award. This impacts our ability to identify photos: we cannot infer from photo X being of the first-place finisher that photo X+1 will be of the second-place finisher, e.g., as there is no guarantee that the second-place finisher was present, and so referring to the results page is not so helpful.

As such, we present our incomplete collection of award winners alongside a humble request: if you recognize any of the players in any of these photos, email Click here to show email address with their name. If you see a gap in any of the photo collections that you can fill with photos you took of your own award-winning chess players, please email Click here to show email address with these photos. Finally, and I (JJ) will use first-person for this one to take full accountability, I chose to identify photos where I was at least 90% sure of the subject. This both will lead to some invariable efforts, which I hope will be correctly swiftly, and to fewer photos being initially tagged than one might hope. Please be patient as this page serves as a living document.

We will keep this page updated to the best of our abilities. If you choose to share any of these photos, and we really hope you do, please do so along with the phrase "courtesy of US Chess."

All photo captions start with the top row, from left.

National Scholastic Blitz Championship:  

K-12 and K-12 U-1800:

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Nico Chasin, K-12 Blitz Champion (Photo by John Hartmann)

K-8:

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Guest GM Elshan Moradiabadi with Oscar Izzy Williams, K-8 Blitz Champion (Photo by Photography in Motion)

K-6 and K-3: 

K-12 Team Winners:

K-12 U-1800 Team Winners:

K-8 Team Winners:

K-6 and K-3 Team Winners:

No photos currently available. Email Click here to show email address with any photos.

National Bughouse Championship: 

K-12:

K-8:

n/a

K-6:

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K-6 Bughouse Champions Aakash Jani and Tariq Yue (Photo by Photography in Motion)

K-12: 

Championship:

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K-12 Championship Team Columbia Grammar & Prep (Photo by David Llada)

Under-1900:

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Under-1600:

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Under-1200:

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The top four individual finishers in the K-12 Under-1200 section were also, collectively, the top team: Pocono Mountains East High. 1st through 4th, from left: Matthew Doughty, Samuel Oh, Brannock Taylor, Joseph Winston McKingley (Photo by David Llada)

Under-800:

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Unrated:

K-8: 

CHAMPIONSHIP

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UNDER-1700:

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UNDER-1400:

UNDER-1100:

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UNDER-900:

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UNDER-700:

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UNRATED:

K-6: 

CHAMPIONSHIP:

UNDER-1400:

UNDER-1200:

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UNDER-1000:

UNDER-800:

UNDER-600:

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UNRATED:

K-5:

CHAMPIONSHIP:

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K-3: 

CHAMPIONSHIP:

UNDER-1000:

UNDER-600:

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K-1:

CHAMPIONSHIP:

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UNDER-500/UNRATED: