Illinois Players Race to Indianapolis for Junior High Nationals

 

With over 1,100 players registered as of Tuesday afternoon, this year’s “YUUUGE” US Chess National Junior High School should be filled with many exciting battles.

The seven-round Swiss tournament, featuring Game/120; 5-second delay time controls, kicks off April 14 with Blitz and Bughouse and the main event running April 15-17.

While many of the nationally-ranked premier junior high / middle school / intermediate school chess players from around the country will be attempting to sink their rooks onto the seventh rank, there are also sections appropriate for all levels of chess experience (Grades K-8 with a US Chess rating Under 750, K-8 Under 1000, K-9 Under 1250, plus an unrated section).

Illinois is represented by 125 players registered to date, who, in grand Chicago political fashion, are urged by this writer to "castle early and often".

[Editor's note: the Illinois pre-registration has been updated as of Thursday morning. Illinois is sending eight junior experts (rated 2000+) and eight Class A players (rated 1800-1999 as of the middle of last month). ]

Some of the toughest competition will be in the K-8 Championship section, which currently holds mostly 7th and 8th graders. Presently there are 252 players registered to play in this section -- with 26 of them rated 2000+. The top two players are Emily Nguyen of Texas (rated 2214) and Danial Asaria from California (2213).

Oddly, Danial is the only player from California registered for the tournament with only days remaining.

Highly-rated Illinois players in the K-8 section include Aydin Turgut, Vincent Do, Jason Daniels, Ricky Wang, Shreya Mangalam, Siddharth Acharya, Aidan Carey, K-8 Illinois state champion Ishaar Ganesan, Kevin Ho, Patrick Rao, Peter Zheng, and Aria Hoesley.

The K-9 section holds many top ninth-graders, including Illinois chess whizzes Matthew Stevens, Akhil Khalghati, Nikhil Khalghati, and Ricky Roman, all from 2016 IHSA state champion Whitney Young High School. The K-9 section currently holds 148 players, led by Ben Li of Michigan (rated 2323) and Maggie Feng of Ohio (2302).

The current total of 1,108 players hail from 37 states, including ten players from Aloha-Land, the great state of Hawaii. (As of Thursday morning this was now 1116 from 38 states).

States sending the most players are Texas (193), New York (198), and Illinois (125). (Updated)

According to advanced scouting, many of the players from Texas will be employing the Tumbleweed Attack, while New York teams favor the Folded Pizza Gambit. Of course, Illinois players are best known for their use of The Disgraced Governor’s Defense.

More to come as the blitz/bughouse tournament blasts off Thursday and the main event starts on Friday.