Results in at the Denker, Barber & NGIT
By Jennifer Shahade   
July 30, 2013
I've just arrived in Madison, Wisconsin for the US Open. I was happy to see a fantastic turnout for the 1st National Girls Invitational and was honored to judge the best game prizes for the Girls, the Barber K-8 & the Denker tournament of high school champions. Melinda J. Matthews will write a full report on the event later this week, but till then, find game and photo highlights. 

The Denker saw a three-way tie for first between Kapil Chandran, Safal Bora and Michael Brown, with Chandran capturing the University of Texas at Dallas scholarship on tiebreak. 
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Denker champs Michael Brown, Safal Bora and Kapil Chandran with Arnold Denker's son Mitchell Denker and International Youth Events director Jerry Nash, Photo Polly Wright 

The two best game prize winners represented two poles of master level junior chess- a brilliant attacking win by Alex Velikanov over top seed Josh Colas and a mature positional win by Dipro Chakraborty.  

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Barber Champs: Craig Hilby, Vignesh Panchanathan, Andrew Tang & Andrew Liu, Photo Polly Wright 

Andrew Liu, Andrew Tang, Vignesh Panchanathan and Craig Hilby tied for first in the Barber. Liu won the spot to the World Youth on tiebreak while the best game prize went to Ziwen Zhou, a fighting battle between two class players. 

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USCF President Ruth Haring, Akshita Gorti, Apurva Virkud and organizer Jennifer Skidmore, Photo Polly Wright
In the girls, 10-year-old Akshita Gorti and Apurva Virkud tied for first place. Michelle Chen, who was leading until her last round loss to Gorti, won the best game prize for her win over Claudia Munoz, of the popular chesscampeona twitter and blog.  

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CLO editor Jen Shahade with the NGIT class winners, all of whom received a copy of Play Like a Girl: Tactics by 9 Queens

Find standings of the Denker, Barber & Girls (updated with final results now) and look for more stories in Melinda's upcoming CLO piece, as well as Al Lawrence's magazine article.