Clear Winners and a Women's World Champion at the K-12! |
December 14, 2009 | |
Results are in from the K-12 National Scholastic Championships (Dallas, Texas, Dec.11-13)! Surprisingly, there was only a tie for first in one section (ninth grade); in comparison, in the 2008 and 2007 K-12 Nationals, there were five ties each year. As typical for the Nationals, many sections featured upsets galore: In the 10th grade section, Matthew Liu won against four higher rated players in a row to top by a full point. In the 6th grade, James Black came out ahead of many higher rated players, including three experts, one of which was his own IS 318 team-mate, Justus Williams. See complete results here. Also go to Monroi.com to play through many games from the weekend. Here are two nice wins from our new 3rd Grade Champion and 7th Grade Champion. 3904 3903 The weekend kicked off with Women's World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk's 44-board simul. Alexandra won 38 games, drew five and lost one to David Luscomb. Kosteniuk also conducted two book signings of her new DVD, "My Best Games" and her hot off the presses book, Diary of a Chess Queen, both of which you can order with a free autograph on chessqueen.com. You can also pick up the book at the USCF store. See a large gallery of photos from the simul and Dallas on chesspics.com. Read a detailed piece on Kosteniuk in an earlier CLO article. Results Summary Kindergarten Individual Champion: Joaquin Perkins Team Champions: The Village School, Houston, Texas 1st Grade Individual Champion: Awonder Liang Team Champions: Dalton, New York 2nd Grade Individual Champion : Rayan Taghizadeh Team Champions: NEST School, New York 3rd Grade Individual Champion : Ruifeng Li Team Champions: Hunter College Campus School, New York 4th Grade Individual Champion: Jeffrey Xiong (sp) Team Champions: The Village School, Houston, TX 5th Grade Individual Champion: Christopher Wu Team Champions: Horace Mann, NY 6th Grade Individual Champion: James Black Team Champions: IS 318, Brooklyn, NY 7th Grade Individual Champion: Jarod Pamatmat Team Champions: IS 318, Brooklyn, NY 8th Grade Individual Champion: Vincent Zhang Team Champions: Canyon Vista Middle School, Austin, TX 9th Grade Individual Champion: Michael Chiang and Justin Karp Team Champions: Horace Mann, New York 10th Grade Individual Champion: Matthew Liu Team Champions: Westwood, Austin, TX 11th Grade Individual Champion: Marc Arnold Team: Bronx High School of Science, NY 12th Grade Individual Champion: William Ong Team: Bellaire High School, Houston, TX Also look for Polly Wright's upcoming story in Chess Life Magazine, and more stories on CLO, including a wrap-up by popular parent blogger Mark Schein. |