Largest Online State Chess Championship

WA State Elementary 2020 is the Largest Online State Championship Ever
By WSECC Organizers | June 4, 2020

Seattle, WA – The 2020 Washington State Elementary Chess Championships is the largest online state chess championship in US history, featuring a whopping 1170 players! At a time when most local and national events were cancelled due to COVID-19, members of the Pacific Northwest chess community collaborated with ChessKid.com on Saturday May 2 to host the Washington State Elementary Chess Championships online. Chief organizer Jacob Mayer orchestrated the day’s festivities, which included a live stream, raffle contest, virtual Zoom help desk, real-time tournament standings, and an online chess store featuring local vendors. The Facebook live stream, hosted by Randy Kaech, contributed to the event’s prestige with a star-studded cast of special guest speakers including Seattle Seahawk K.J. Wright, former World Champion GM Susan Polgar, WA State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, and local chess stars IM Bryce Tiglon and WFM Alexandra Botez. Despite some first round hiccups caused by a server crash, over 1,000 players completed the marathon 7-hour, 7-round extravaganza.

Hosting an event of this magnitude online presented several logistical challenges and was only possible thanks to the tremendous efforts of the WSECC Organizers, the ChessKid Team, and the local chess families. All games were played from home over the internet using custom accounts created by ChessKid’s team to incorporate the players’ local NWSRS (Northwest Scholastic Rating System) ratings to ensure proper Swiss pairings. Due to high traffic volume on the ChessKid website, many players experienced connectivity problems and subsequently reported them post-event via a feedback form. A joint effort between the ChessKid team and the WSECC Fair Play Review Team resulted in impartial adjudication of all games in question and players’ scores in affected games were adjusted accordingly for points fairly earned.

To ensure honest play and fair games, each player signed a Fair Play Agreement before the start of the tournament in which they promised to play their own moves without outside assistance. A systematic three-pronged approach consisting of ChessKid analysis, engine analysis, and human analysis was used to check all suspicious games for fair play violations. Only the players found by all three methods to have violated the Fair Play Agreement were forfeited from the tournament. For the most part, the fair play rules were followed, as less than 1% of total players were found to have violated fair play.

After 3,721 games and 254,340 moves in 7+ hours of play, only the most courageous chess warriors survived the marathon experience! Special congratulations to the following State Champions: Kindergarten – Ted Wang, 1st Grade – Sharvesh Arul, 2nd Grade – Shrey Talathi, 3rd Grade – Keshav Beegala, 4th Grade – Derek Heath & Erin Bian, 5th Grade – Derin Goktepe & Jack Miller, 6th Grade – Owen Xuan, Kai Marcelais & Christos Boulis, 7-8th Grade – Sonia Devaraju & Brandon Peng, I Love Chess Too – Anne-Marie Velea.

Congratulations to all who have contributed to this record-breaking event!

About Washington State Elementary Chess Championships

The Washington State Elementary Chess Championships (WSECC) is largest annual scholastic chess event in the Pacific Northwest. Starting with only a few hundred players in the early 1990s, the tournament now attracts as many as 1,500 scholastic chess players from throughout WA State each year. WSECC rotates between the western, southern, and eastern regions of the state on a 3-year cycle. Since 2020, the event is run by the WSECC Organizing Committee, a group of experienced chess leaders and organizers from throughout WA State. This committee, appointed by the nonprofit Chess Enrichment Association, is tasked with running the highest possible quality event each year. The committee’s goal is to provide the opportunity for local scholastic chess players from all backgrounds to compete in a fun, large-scale festival of chess. For more information, please visit: https://wsecc.org/.

About Chess Enrichment Association

Chess Enrichment Association (CEA) is a 501(c) (3) nonprofit corporation based in Lynden, WA. Its purpose is to support and host chess tournaments, camps, programs, and other events that promote chess for children, primarily focusing on elementary scholastic chess programs. CEA was founded in 2004 by Elliott Neff and now oversees the organization of WSECC starting from 2020.

Contact
To learn more about this record-breaking event, please see the link to the website in the sidebar.

Note: I am sharing this with the permission of others on the WSECC organizing committee. I am a member of the committee. NM Josh Sinanan took the lead composing the article, but the rest of the committee offered feedback

A Greco Composition

This position is presented as mate in 17 moves by Antonius von der Linde in Geschichte und Litteratur des Schachspiels (1874), where he credits Gioachino Greco as the composer. Komodo 13 fails to confirm the forced checkmate, but there is no doubt that White wins with correct play. Shift the White king one square to the left and you have the position about which József Szén wrote with the solution in the 1830s (the player on the move wins in Szén's position).

White to move

Locked?

The year was 1999. The place was Internet Chess Club. The time control was 2 12. I was White.

Black to move

The game continued:

37...Rf7 38.Kg2 Rfh7 39.Kh2 and I offered a draw. My opponent agreed. Did Black have something better?

Pattern?

Yesterday morning I was reading my own Checkmates and Tactics (2019), a self-published book created as a camp workbook for a youth chess camp. This book consists of exercises I have been using with developing players for nearly 15 years, as well as a glossary of tactical ideas and checkmate patterns.

Although I wrote the book, I still need to calculate when I encounter some of the exercises. Such was the case yesterday morning, although the first move was instantly obvious in exercise 76 from Saalbach,A.--Anderssen,A., Leipzig 1858.

Black to move

Nonetheless, the correct way forward was not immediately obvious when the motif reappeared during a blitz game last night.

Black to move

Fortress

I was looking through a game played in 1996 and published in Chess Informant 65. Veselin Topalov and Boris Gelfand played an instructive endgame. Gelfand annotated the game for Informant. I studied the game as played, studied Gelfand's annotations, and with the engine running mistakenly thought that Topalov had a decisive advantage. Hence, I overlooked the game result. I tried to repeat Topalov's apparent success against Stockfish 11.

Naturally, I failed. Gelfand anticipated my failure in his annotations, which I should have studied with greater attention.

Black to move

Stockfish 11 64 POPCNT -- Stripes,J
Blitz 15m+10s, 04.06.2020

44...a5

Gelfand gave this move an explanation mark, as it is the only move with winning chances.

45.Kf3 24 a4 46.Kg4

Gelfand played 46.Ke2, and after 46...a3, sacrificed a pawn. 47.b6 cxb6 48.Nc1 Kc5 49.Kd3 Bf4 and the game was drawn ten moves later, but my chess engine says that Black has a decisive advantage. Many years of using chess engines should have taught me however, that -+ with a score in the neighborhood of -2.50 is not yet a won game.

White to move

After 49...Bf4

My play against the engine continued:

46...a3 47.Nc1 Kc5 48.Kf5

Black to move

48...Bb2

Gelfand's annotations offer 48...Kd4 here as unclear, but it is probably a draw.

49.Na2 Kd6 50.Nb4 Kc5 51.Na2 Kxb5 52.e5 Kc5 53.d6

Black to move

53...Kc6

There were a couple of ways to lose here.

a) 53...cxd6 54.e6 Kc6 55.Kg6+-

b) 53...Bxe5 54.d7+-

54.Nb4+ Kd7 55.dxc7 Kxc7 56.Ke4  Bxe5 57.Kxe5 a2 58.Nxa2 ½–½

I tried a second time against Stockfish. This time play began with Gelfand's suggested alternative to Topalov's choice.

Black to move

Stockfish 11 64 POPCNT -- Stripes,J.
Blitz 15m+10s, 04.06.2020

49...b5

Topalov played 49...Bf4, as noted in my note above.

50.Kc2 Kc4 51.d6 Bxd6 52.Nb3 Be5 53.Na5+ Kc5 54.Kb1 Kb6 55.Nb3 b4 56.Ka2

Black to move

White has a fortress very much like the one that Gelfand constructed in the actual game, whci was played at Wijk aan Zee in 1996 and published as Informant 65/588.

56...Kb5 57.Nc1 Kc4 58.Nb3 Bb2 59.Nd2+ Kd3 60.Nb3 Kxe4 61.Na5 Kd4

White to move

62.Kb3 Kc5 63.Kc2 Kb5 64.Nb3 Be5 65.Kb1 Kc4 66.Ka2 Bf4 67.Na5+ Kc3 68.Nb3 Bc7 69.Nc5 Kc2 70.Nb3 Bb6

White to move

I had worked hard to reach the position, and then just before Stockfish moved, I saw why it was not winning.

71.Nd4+!

71...Bxd4 is stalemate.

71...Kc1 72.Nc6 Bc5 73.Na5 Kc2 74.Nb3 Bb6 75.Na1+ Kc3 76.Nb3 Kc2 ½–½

Surprising

My students and I are going through some of the gems in Irving Chernev, The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess (1955). The finish of this game between Aron Nimzovich and a player whose identity is not preserved by Chernev proved delightful.

White to move

Clueless

One of the things I do routinely with Chess Informant is to race through batches of games in openings that I favor. Sometimes the end of the game--when a Grand Master resigned--offers an opportunity to practice my technique finishing a won position against the Silicon Beast (Stockfish 10 in this instance). Yesterday I failed to win from a position where I had a two pawn advantage.

In Krysa,L. -- Kobalia, M., Gibraltar 2020, Informant 143/122, Kobalia resigned after White's move 23. I took White against Stockfish.

Black to move

After 23.bxa4 1-0

Stripes,J -- Stockfish 10

23...Qxe2 24.a5 Qxa2 25.Bb6

These moves were simple enough, especially as they were provided in Branko Tadic's annotations to the game.

25...Qb3

According to the engine, my advantage is 2.38 pawns. I should be able to finish this, but how?

White to move

First Attempt

26.a6 Rab8 27.Rb1

This was the only move that did not lose, later analysis revealed.

27...Bb2 28.Qxb8

I found this move after trying a couple of losing moves. Again, the only move that maintains equality.

28...Rxb8 29.Bd4 Rg8 30.Rxb2 Qa4 31.a7 Qxd4

White to move

32.Ra1

Once again, White had a single non-losing move.

32...Qxb2 33.a8Q =

Second Attempt

26.Qc6 h6 27.Qc4 Qxc4 28.Rxc4

Black to move

It turns out that the bishops do not change much. This is still a rook ending with a single pawn advantage and that pawn on the flank. Perhaps computer vs. computer gives White winning chances, but all I can do is draw (except when I manage to lose).

28...Rfe8 29.Rfc1 Kh7 30.R1c2 Re1+ 31.Kg2 Ra6 32.Rc6 Ra1

White to move

33.Bc7 Ra8 34.Re6 Bd4 35.Re4

Not a particularly effective strategy, chasing the bishop, but I was feeling rather clueless, despite an apparent advantage.

35...Rd1 36.Bb6 Bxb6 37.axb5 Rb1 38.Rc6 Rb8 39.Ree6

White to move

I played another 30 moves against the beast because a rook ending against a computer is not terrible practice.

There may have been other efforts starting at move 26, but I never managed to find a way to victory.

Stockfish suggests 26.Rfd1 Rxa5

White to move

What would you play? There is a single winning move.

Chess Informant 143

Chess Informant 143 arrived yesterday as book and CD. After a few more hours of post-dinner work, I installed the CD on my notebook and started working through the first article in the magazine. Ivan Sokolov presents some games and game fragments from the Corus Chess tournament that was held in January at Wijk aan Zee with a one-round visit to Eindhoven.

I was well-familiar with Eindhoven when I was reading about the 1975 Wijk aan Zee tournament in high school because my other passion at the time was the military history of World War II. I read Cornelius Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, watched the film based on the book, and even bought and played an Avalon Hill board game based on the battle.

I usually follow this tournament, although this year that amounted to know more than watching Danny King's PowerPlay videos on YouTube. In January 2000, I followed this tournament live on the Internet Chess Club for the first time. No other Grandmaster chess event consistently draws my attention year after year, but the past couple of years, it seems, I have not found the time to follow it closely.

Hence, Ivan Sokolov's highlights, like Danny King's, are most welcome. I recall watching Sokolov play in this event a few years ago. Sokolov presents more than a dozen games and several fragments. His commentary is instructive and entertaining. The second entry is "seemingly 'simple position'" (16) where Anish Giri blundered.

Black to move

When Stockfish thinks for less than half a minute, there is very little difference between the three moves that Sokolov analyzes here. But, then, the engine finds one move that is equal and a slight advantage for White in the other two. This slight advantage, it turns out, is a technical win that is just deep enough that the engine's evaluation is less than reliable. I played one of them against Stockfish last night. The computer diverged from the game's variation, but finding the winning line still was easy.

The candidate moves:

a) 39...Rd7 (played in the game)
b) 39...Kf5
c) 39...h5

The second choice leads down the same road as the game with a winning pawn ending for White. 39...h5 draws.

The game, Firouzja,A. -- Giri,A., continued 39...Re7 40.Kf3 Kf5 41.Rxh4 Kxe5 42.Re4+ Kf6 43.Rxe7 Kxe7

White to move

44.Kf4 Kf6 45.g4 a5 46.a4 h6 47.h4 Ke6 48.g5 hxg5

And this position caught my interest, thanks to Sokolov's commentary. In blitz, I would have made the wrong move without a thought, but there is an important principle here that should be understood. It involves counting.

White to move

How would you finish?