IM Kesav Viswanadha and FM Vignesh Panchanatham started the day as the only perfect scores. Once Kesav beat Vignesh, it looked like Vignesh and his hopes of first place were dashed. However the miracle happened. In the final round, 13 players had 5/6 while Viswanadha had 6/6. IM Andrew Tang managed to beat Kesav so any of the 5 pointers who won would tie for first place. In the end there were six winners.
Let's look at each of the 2016 champions:
1. FM Vignesh Panchanatham: Vignesh had the best tiebreaks of everyone and goes home with the first place trophy. He lost a tough morning game but then came back strong in Round 7, finishing off Gabriel Sam with a cool tactic.
1. Rxg7+!
Vignesh also was part of the Harker Team, the winner of the Team Championship.
2. IM Kesav Viswanadha: It was a tough finish for Kesav, as all he needed was to draw his final game to capture clear first. However Kesav played very professionally throughout the event. I was really surprised that anyone could beat him given how well he had been playing up until the final round.
3. IM Andrew Tang: It's tough to be top seed as everyone is gunning for you. He stumbled with a few draws in the middle rounds, but when everything was on the line he went out there and took down the leader. Impressive resilience from Andrew.
4. FM Justus Williams: After his Round 3 loss he said to me "A minor setback for a big comeback." He nailed it by winning his final four games to tie for first.
5. NM Kyle Haining: The most surprising winner, only because his rating is so much lower than the other winners. On the final day Kyle beat two 2400 players back to back, so it's tough to say that anyone deserves to be co-champion more than him.
6. NM Bryce Tiglon: Bryce always comes into his games with confidence, and this helped a lot in his final round. It was a dead drawn queen endgame but Bryce knew that he had to win to get first place and he kept fighting and fighting until eventually it wasn't so drawn anymore. Tiglon's performance was huge for his team, as it helped Lakeside School to finish in clear 2nd place in the team competition.
The people that organize this tournament and all National Scholastic events do an amazing job. There are 1500 freaking kids, it's incredible how quickly the pairings come out. I've been around a lot of chess tournaments, and am used to rounds starting 20-30 minutes late. They don't allow this at Nationals and regular tournament organizers should really look to these events as a standard for how to run your tournament. Simply put, it should be unacceptable for any round in any chess tournament to begin late when we start on time and have the pariings released so early in all of our National Scholastic events.
Finally, I was very impressed with the Women's Chess Committee. They had a special booth and a room for girls to hang out in between games. Also there were a few cool events such as a Skype talk with Alexandra Weiner (the Brown University Chess Club president) and a simul with WIM Carolina Blanco.
Also congrats to the many team and section winners!
Find full standings of the event here and find more photos and snippets on the US Chess twitter feed.
IM Greg Shahade is the founder of the US Chess School and the US Chess League. Find out more about a training event he is organizing here.
Categories
Archives
- November 2024 (18)
- October 2024 (35)
- September 2024 (23)
- August 2024 (27)
- July 2024 (44)
- June 2024 (27)
- May 2024 (32)
- April 2024 (51)
- March 2024 (34)
- February 2024 (25)
- January 2024 (26)
- December 2023 (29)
- November 2023 (26)
- October 2023 (37)
- September 2023 (27)
- August 2023 (37)
- July 2023 (47)
- June 2023 (33)
- May 2023 (37)
- April 2023 (45)
- March 2023 (37)
- February 2023 (28)
- January 2023 (31)
- December 2022 (23)
- November 2022 (32)
- October 2022 (31)
- September 2022 (19)
- August 2022 (39)
- July 2022 (32)
- June 2022 (35)
- May 2022 (21)
- April 2022 (31)
- March 2022 (33)
- February 2022 (21)
- January 2022 (27)
- December 2021 (36)
- November 2021 (34)
- October 2021 (25)
- September 2021 (25)
- August 2021 (41)
- July 2021 (36)
- June 2021 (29)
- May 2021 (29)
- April 2021 (31)
- March 2021 (33)
- February 2021 (28)
- January 2021 (29)
- December 2020 (38)
- November 2020 (40)
- October 2020 (41)
- September 2020 (35)
- August 2020 (38)
- July 2020 (36)
- June 2020 (46)
- May 2020 (42)
- April 2020 (37)
- March 2020 (60)
- February 2020 (38)
- January 2020 (45)
- December 2019 (35)
- November 2019 (35)
- October 2019 (42)
- September 2019 (45)
- August 2019 (56)
- July 2019 (44)
- June 2019 (35)
- May 2019 (40)
- April 2019 (48)
- March 2019 (61)
- February 2019 (39)
- January 2019 (30)
- December 2018 (29)
- November 2018 (51)
- October 2018 (45)
- September 2018 (29)
- August 2018 (49)
- July 2018 (35)
- June 2018 (31)
- May 2018 (39)
- April 2018 (31)
- March 2018 (26)
- February 2018 (33)
- January 2018 (30)
- December 2017 (26)
- November 2017 (24)
- October 2017 (30)
- September 2017 (30)
- August 2017 (31)
- July 2017 (28)
- June 2017 (32)
- May 2017 (26)
- April 2017 (37)
- March 2017 (28)
- February 2017 (30)
- January 2017 (27)
- December 2016 (29)
- November 2016 (24)
- October 2016 (32)
- September 2016 (31)
- August 2016 (27)
- July 2016 (24)
- June 2016 (26)
- May 2016 (19)
- April 2016 (30)
- March 2016 (36)
- February 2016 (28)
- January 2016 (32)
- December 2015 (26)
- November 2015 (23)
- October 2015 (16)
- September 2015 (28)
- August 2015 (28)
- July 2015 (6)
- June 2015 (1)
- May 2015 (2)
- April 2015 (1)
- February 2015 (3)
- January 2015 (1)
- December 2014 (1)
- July 2010 (1)
- October 1991 (1)
- August 1989 (1)
- January 1988 (1)
- December 1983 (1)