Mass Players at National K-12 Grade Championships

Mass Players at 

National K-12 Grade Championships

report by Boston Elite Chess

Holiday greetings to chess friends in Boston and New England area!

I wanted to pass some great news from Mass young players at Orlando. (Well, the news is about 10 days old. Let's blame the theme parks at Orlando for my delayed communication.) 

This year, there were 32 players from Mass, among 1692 players nationally. I think this is the largest delegation we have ever had in recent years. Mass ranked #9 in the number of participants from all states, significantly lower than the local host Florida (613), and New York (499) which has a strong tradition and tremendously successful chess-in-schools program. But we are now in same order of magnitude as other strong chess states, like NJ (50), IL (46), TX (45), etc. 

AL 7

AR 9

AZ 11

N-CAL 13

S-CAL 20

CO 10

CT 22

DC 9

FL 613

GA 34

HI 5

IA 2

ID 3

IL 46

IN 10

KS 4

KY 4

LA 12

MA 32

MD 16

MI 12

MN 4

MO 6

NC 61

NE 1

NH 7

NJ 50

NY 499

OH 11

OK 1

PA 19

SC 5

TERR 21

TN 7

TX 45

UT 1

VA 39

VT 1

WA 16

WI 4

More importantly, our young players did very well in this national competition. Among the 13 sections (K-12), we had four players fighting for the championship title in the last round on board one or two: Luke Ji (Grade 1), Ryan Wang (Grade 4), Max Chen (Grade 9), Nithin Kavi (Grade 11).  

In the end, Nithin Kavi brought the championship title back to MA with a win! 

•  Max Chen, 4th place  (Grade 9)  
•  Ryan Wang, 8th place  (Grade 4)  
•  Luke Ji, 3rd place  (Grade 1)  

There are many other trophies and notable achievements from Mass players that we should congratulate on (top 30):

• Kevin Hass, 7th place (grade 11)
• Suraj Ramanathan, 14th (grade 9)
• Mark Chudnovsky, 19th (grade 9)
• Alan Song, 8th place (grade 7)
• David Katsman 30th (grade 6)    
• Owen Ji, 16th place (grade 5)
• Alex Meng, 16th place (grade 4)
• Maya Figelman, 27th (grade 3)
• Sujay Kunamneni, 12th place (grade 2)
• Dattasai Kilari, 15th (grade 2)
• Siddharth Ajay Kurup, 17th (grade 2)
• Christine Nguyen, 9th (K)
• David Figelman, 13th (K)

In the Blitz event:

• Ryan Wang, 5th place (Blitz K-6)
• Lawrence Tu, 20th place (Blitz K-6)
• Mark Chudnovsky, 24th place (Blitz K-12) 

Detailed results can be found in http://www.uschess.org/results/2018/k12/?page=STANDINGS&xsection=11
Let's congratulate all the Mass participants for their hard work and achievement! 
Also their parents and coaches for the support! 
Attached are some pictures that you can share some of their joys. 
 

Yi Wang 
BostonEliteChess.org