The championship tournament is finished! Update: August 3rd, 10:00 PM. Tournament is complete and has been rated by USCF – link; photos posted (link); unannotated games (link); annotated games to come.
Congratulations to our champions! Jason Chien is 2013 TCCC Champion with a perfect 4.0 score. Ishaar Ganesan is 2o13 TCCC Under Age 18 champion with 2.5 points.
Tournament summary:
Things got off to a bang in Round 1 at iExcell, twelve players began to fight for the crown. Most surprising was the Round 1 victory of Prithiv Kumar over Dennis Bourgerie, the only significant upset of the tournament. Unfortunately Dennis would continue to lose rating points in Round 2, with a draw to Karthik Karra. As the first half of the tournament ended, three players would carry perfect 2.0 scores: Reigning champion Joseph Alford, past champion Jason Chien, and Ishaar Ganesan.
The second Saturday began with Ishaar, the lowest rated of the 2.0 group dropping down to face Advaith Prabu for a draw. It was a battle of the Champions on top board, with 1900 rated Joseph Alford succumbing to 1939 rated Jason Chien. Two more games would end in draws. (We saw a total of 8 draws during the tournament of 24 games – possibly the most draws in any Championship in recent memory.)
The final round saw 3.0 Jason Chien face 2.5 point Ishaar Ganesan. The battle would clinch the championship for Jason and put Ishaar into position where he could be caught, but not surpassed, for an Under Age 18 trophy. Dennis Bourgerie would score his first win (after two draws) against Advaith Prabu, knocking Advaith out of the running for the Under-18 trophy.
The battle of the tournament may well have been the other two 1.5 players, Mihir Bafna and Karthik Karra who were playing each other. An excellent distraction of the Queen guard on move 28 allowed Mihir to go from one pawn up to two pawns and a Bishop and a nearly crushing advantage. But a subtle misstep on move 34 saw Karthik able to take a perpetual check.
We heard Ishaar’s shout of joy from two hallways away in the playing room, as he advanced to sole Under-18 Champion.
Many thanks to iExcell for providing us with a wonderful location to hold the Championship, thanks to house players Akshat Shah and Anusha Nadkarni (who never did get a game,) thanks to all players who came to the Qualifier and the championship, and congratulations to our champions!
Final crosstable (by standings/by rating):
1 Chien,Jason 1939 4.0 W5 W9 W2 W3
2 Alford,Joseph O 1900 3.0 W6 W8 L1 W7
3 Ganesan, Ishaar Pe 1503 2.5 W10 W7 D8 L1
4 Bourgerie, Dennis 1737 2.0 L9 D5 D6 W8
5 Karra, Narayan Karthik 1390 2.0 L1 D4 W11 D6
6 Bafna, Mihir 1332 2.0 L2 W12 D4 D5
7 Berrocales, Seann 2.0 W11 L3 W9 L2
8 Prabu, Advaith 1479 1.5 W12 L2 D3 L4
9 Kumar, Prithiv Sen 1311 1.5 W4 L1 L7 D10
10 Mahajan,Jai 1200 1.5 L3 D11 D12 D9
11 Chandramouli, Adithya 1403 1.0 L7 D10 L5 D12
12 Mcdade, Pierce 880 1.0 L8 L6 D10 D11
13 Shah, Akshat 736 0.0 -N- -N- -N- -N-
14 Nadkarni, Anusha 642 0.0 -N- -N- -N- -N-
