Tactics Tuesday: Southeastern State K-12 Championships

This week's Tactics Tuesday pulls from the State Scholastic Championships from four southeastern states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida. The winners of the K-12, K-8, and K-5 sections will represent their respective states in the Denker, Barber, and Rockefeller National State Invitationals held alongside the U.S. Open this summer, making it especially nice that top boards from these events were available to follow along online.

Download our printable worksheet or solve along with our interactive study. Tournament results (National Invitational sections only) are listed below:

North Carolina

K-12: FM Vishnu Vanapalli 4½/5 playoff winner over Nikhilesh Ram (2nd) and Pulak Agarwalla (3rd) 4½/5
K-8: Andrew Wu 5/5 finished ahead of Eshwar Kotapalli on tiebreaks
K-5: Advik Prasanna 5½/6
Full results, including for K-8, K-5, K-3, K-1 and Under sections available here

South Carolina

K-12: Will Snyder finished ahead of Caton Tsao on tiebreaks with 2½/3 in the state qualifier of the top eight finishers of the K-12 Open (where Snyder also finished first on tiebreaks atop a trio to score 4½/5, and Tsao was the fifth and final player to qualify with a 4/5 score).
K-8: Aaron Wang 2½/3 won qualifier after winning K-8 Open with 5/5
K-5: Tanay Sanghani 3/3 won qualifier after winning K-5 Open with 4½/5 ahead of Tamaghna Roy on tiebreaks
Full results are available here.

Virginia

K-12: Aarush Vinod finished clear first with 4½/5 ahead of two higher-rated national masters and a slew of experts in a stacked field.
K-8: Kyle Zhuang 4½/5 clear first
K-5: Emin Baim 4½/5 clear first
MSA crosstable (no tiebreak information)

Florida

K-12: CM Marvin Gao and Antony Gospodinov 4½/5 tied for first
K-8: FM BREJESH CHAKRABARTI 4½/5 clear first
K-5: Maxwell Yang and Vivan Mulay 4½/5 tied first
MSA crosstable (no tiebreak information)