-- More than 760 students, K - 12, representing over 100 schools from around the NY Metro area came to play at the 2007 Greater New York Team and Individual Chess Championships, Jan. 27 - 28, 2007 at Manhattan's New Yorker Hotel. Representing one of the biggest turnouts in the tournament's history, the annual Greater New York Scholastic Individual and Team Championships, now in its 41st year, is the longest-running, USCF-rated scholastic chess tournament in the country.
The tournament was sponsored by the Kasparov Chess Foundation and organized in conjunction with the Chess Center of New York. Players competed in one of the four main divisions: High School (K-12), Junior High (K-9), Elementary (K-6) and Primary (K-3). Divided into 5-round Swiss-style one-day tournaments, the two day event drew top-rated competitive players throughout the New York Metro area.
The High School Varsity Championship is the flagship event of the Greater New York Scholastic Championships, featuring some of the top-rated juniors in the country. This year's competition featured three chess Masters, including two International Masters, in addition to two Chess Experts.
Senior Master Robert Hess, the 2006 U.S. Junior Champion and a freshman from Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School, won the High School Varsity Section over International Master Alex Lenderman, a senior from Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn. Each of them won four games, while both drew with the tournament's top-ranked player, International Master Salvijus Bercys, also a senior from Murrow High and the 2006 Greater NY High School Champion, to finish with 4.5 points. But Hess emerged with the superior tie-breaks to clinch the title of Greater New York High School Champion, his first High School Championship.
Despite their hegemony in high school chess at the city, state and national levels over the years, the chess Masters at Brooklyn's Edward R Murrow High School were given a good run for their money this year, finishing with 15 out of a possible 20 points, just 1.5 points in front of fellow New York City chess legend Stuyvesant High, who ended up with 13.5 points, in Second. One of the Stuyvesant players, 12th grader Danny Rohde, began his scholastic career in 1995, as a kindergartener in the Greater New York Primary Championship. This year he accomplished the unprecedented feat of having played in the Greater New York Scholastic Championships for every one of his thirteen consecutive years of eligibility in primary and secondary school. Murrow High School has won the Greater New York High School Championship nearly every year since the 1990's.
In the Junior High Varsity Championship on Saturday, January 27th, top-ranked Alec Getz, a 7th-grade Chess Expert from New York City's Hunter School, emerged victorious on tie-breaks over New Jersey 7th-grader Andrew Ng, and 9th-grader Zachary Weiner from Stuyvesant High (who then went on to help power his high school team to capture second place in Sunday's High School Varsity Championship the next day). All three players scored 4.5 out of a possible 5 points. This was Getz's first Junior High Championship, although he finished second in both 2006 and 2005. Intermediate School 318 in Brooklyn crushed the Junior High Varsity Team competition with 15 out of 20 points, effectively winning the championship with a whole round to spare over second place Hunter School, who scored 11 points.
Brooklyn fifth-grader Alexander Ostrovskiy swept the Elementary Varsity Section on Sunday with a perfect 5-0 finish (like Andrew Ng did in 2006). Although they each lost their respective games with Ostrovskiy, New Jersey 4th-grader Eric Liao bested 5th-grader Philip Von Scheltinga of Manhattan's Browning School for second place on tie-breaks, both players scoring 4-1. The Bronx's Horace Mann School just nosed out Princeton, NJ Day School, 12 points to 11.5, to win the Elementary Varsity Team Championship.
Top-ranked New Jersey second-grader Christopher Wu turned in another perfect performance to win the Primary Varsity Section on Saturday, 5-0, just as he had done in the Primary K-1 Division in 2006, when he was a first grader. Timothy Hoang was clear second with 4.5, while Benjamin Issroff took third on tie-breaks with 4 points. New York City's Dalton School, a primary powerhouse for over two decades, again proved victorious in the Primary Varsity Team Championships, scoring 14 out of a possible 20 points, over second place Horace Mann School.
Two first graders, William Graif of Scarsdale and Vaed Khurjekar of Basking Ridge, NJ each won all five of their games to top the K-1 Division of the Primary Championship on Saturday, so they faced each other in a special "sixth-round" playoff to determine the Championship of the K-1 Division of the Primary Championship, which William Graif won. Ben Goldstein scored 4.5 points to end up in third place on tie-breaks. New York City's Dalton School convincingly won the Team Championship of the K-1 Section over second place Columbia Grammar School of Manhattan, 16.5 points to 12.
Special thanks go to Chief Tournament Director and Organizer Steve Immitt and Assistant Tournament Director and Organizer, International Arbiter Sophia Rohde. For a complete rundown on final standings visit www.chesscenter.cc.
Founded by World Chess Champion
Garry Kasparov, KCF's mission is to bring the many educational
benefits of chess to children throughout the United States by
providing a complete chess curriculum and enrichment programs. The
Foundation promotes the study of chess as a cognitive learning tool
in curricular classes and after-school programs for elementary,
middle and high schools, both in the public and private school
sectors. The not-for-profit educational organization also organizes
tournaments and competitions on a local and national basis. For more
information, please visit http://www.kasparovchessfoundation.org/
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