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X-Men Win US Amateur Team North Print E-mail
By Glenn Panner   
February 27, 2012
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The US Amateur Team North Champions, the "X-Men": Tenzing Shaw, Pablo Diaz, Dmitri Sergatskov, Fred Scott Allsbrook & NM Mariano Acosta
The US Amateur Team- North was held at the Crowne Plaza in Northbrook, Illinois from February 17-19, and drew 38 teams, up from 34 teams the year before.  Stars abounded in the field, including four-time US Champion GM Alexander Shabalov, current US HS champion FM Eric Rosen, and World U8 champion FM Awonder Liang.
 
The lone perfect 5-0 result was turned in by the Chess X-men team of Mariano Acosta, Tenzing Shaw, Fred Allsbrook, Dmitri Sergatskov, and Pablo Diaz.  Board prizes were won by GM Shabalov (board 1), Tenzing Shaw (board 2), Davis Whaley (board 3), with Matthew Leach and Dmitry Sergatskov tying for the board 4 prize.  Other prize winners included:
 
Second Overall: Hope & Change (Dennis Monokroussos, Michael Chen, Peter Chen, Matthew Leach)
Best Junior Team: John, Awonder and Tommy have  ADream (John Veech, Awonder Liang, Thomas Schneider, Adream Liang)
Best U1900: Anonymous (Sam Schmakel, Aakaash Meduri, Avinash Rajendra, Alex Nevling)
Best U1600: A Draw is Good Enough (Jimi Akintonde, Mark Waechter, Christian Pena, Adrian Mui)
Best U1300: Scrubs (Derek Tu, Aaron Leon, David Moran, Ad Chempakasseril, Athar Qureshi)
Best Team Name: Bye (please wait)

The young gold medallist Awonder Liang, 8, had a performance rating of 2416 in the event. He had an undefeated overall score of 4/5 on board two. Here is one of his victories against fellow Wisconsin Junior Star and World Youth chess championship participant NM Alexander Velikanov.

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Other activities included the Illinois Blitz Championship which was dominated by GM Dmitry Gurevich (who was onsite coaching students all weekend) who ran out to a 8-0 start before ceding a couple of fighting draws to NM and student Sam Schmakel.  38 players participated in the event with half of them being over 2000.
 
The tournament was organized by Tim Just and Glenn Panner, directed by Keith Ammann and Maret Thorpe, and boards, sets, and clocks were provided by Sevan Muradian and the North American Chess Association.

Also see CLO reports on the US Amateur Team East, South, the West and the video report, "Chess Openings: A Crash Course From the World Amateur Team."
 
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