2023 Alberta Junior Chess Championship

2023-11-05 By Lili Ou

The CJCC has hosted chess tournaments on the weekend for four consecutive weeks. This past weekend we just concluded the last major event of 2023 – the Alberta Junior Chess Championship at the University of Calgary’s Taylors College Building.

Two players from Edmonton and four players from Calgary have been invited to compete in the closed championship section. They completed 5 round-robin games in 2 days. The first day of competition was a long and difficult day. Tymur and Emil, the top two players with highest ratings finished their third round at 10:46 PM, just before the entire building shut down completely at 11 PM. Many thanks to Yao Ming for not only hosting the game but also sending two players home after the game. Three 90-minute 30-second time control games a day are too much for both players and arbiter. I recommend playing only 2 games a day so that players have more energy to perform at their best.

Keleberda, Tymur won the championship with 3.5/5. He will also receive the $500 travel grant for participating the Canadian Junior Chess Championship. Srinivasan, Hemant defeated Soberov, Emil, who had 250 points higher than him. With this victory, he overtook Emil, who had the same points, and won the second place. Emil finished the 3^rd place. Chandra, Anand Rishi finished 4 with 2.5 points. Yash, who had the lowest points, defeated Maxim, who had 220 points higher than him. He drew with Hemand and Anand. Yash ranked fifth with two points.  Although Vasic, Maxim did not performed at his best dring the tournament, he was the only player in the group to defeat the champion Tymur.

There were 14 players competing in the Open section.  Cui, Antai had not been attend chess tournament for one and a half year. He did not do well in Calgary Junior but perform excellence this time. He won 3 games and drew with Zhang, James and Alpuri, Aaqil who had 900 points higher than him. He won the 1^st place with better tie-break scoures. James finished 2^nd with 4 points. 9-year-old Campos Gorgonio, Eduardo only lost to Antai, drew with James by threefold repetition, and won the other 3 games. Eduardo ranked the 3^rd place with 3.5.

U1300 has the most players. 32 players compete in seven rounds of 45 minutes and 30 seconds. Jonas Huang, Ansh Jain and Teja Brown sealed the top three spots with identical scores of 5.5/7. Jonas took first place thanks to a better tie-break, Ansh was second and Teja was third. Contrary to the U1300, the number of U800 participants is very small. Originally, there were 9 players participating in the competition, and the competition format was also 7 rounds Swiss of 45 min 30 sec. However, due to the withdrawal of contestants’ midway, the Swiss paring could not proceed as due to insufficient number of people. Alan Chen and Aara Singh, who had already played against each other, had to play against each other second time. In the end, Razvi Zarib, who had no ratings but was significantly stronger, secured the first place with a perfect score 7/7. Kevin Song finished second with 6 wins. Aarav Singh finished third with 4 points.

Published at 2023-11-09 12:11:43 by Lily Ou