Date:	   Sun, 10 Apr 2005 
Subject: SUPERnationals


Hello chess friends!

I'm writing this from Nashville, Tennessee, the site of the 2005 Supernationals scholastic
championships.  Supernationals means that K-3, K-6, K-9 and K-12 all compete at the same location.
 This happens once every four years.  

Naturally, the result is the largest tournament in USCF history--in this case over 5200 players. 
I can summarize it briefly: too many kids!!!  After some major problems during the bughouse/blitz
tournaments on Thursday and a lengthy delay in starting round 1, the tournament ran quite
smoothly.

My students did surprisingly well as a group.  Of the 7 kids that I coached this weekend, everyone
scored at least 50%.  Four won individual trophies.  Our K-9 team (two players) and K-8 team
(three players) both took team trophies despite competing against teams with four or more players
(top four scores counted).

Here are the scores for my private students:

K-9 team = 9th place
   David = 5.5/7 for 4th place
    Jojo = 4.5/7 for 28th place

K-8 team = 13th place
    Jeff = 5.0/7 for 34th place
  others = Tejas and Vijay

By far the greatest achievement was turned in by David in the K-9 section.  He lost round 1 and
drew round 2 (against two 1700-1800 players) which is never a good sign.  Then he won five
straight games and through the grace of lucky tiebreaks, he finished in fourth place in the
nation!  Of note is his impressive last round victory over Sarkis Agaian, a 2123 rated kid from
New York.  Jojo drew a 1948 player and Jeff crushed an 1890 opponent.

Here are other California scores of interest.  I'm intentionally leaving out the names of several
players whose brains never quite seemed to make it to Nashville.

Sam Shankland scored 5.0/7 in K-8 (17th place)
Jonathan Soo Hoo scored 4.0/7 in K-8
Avinash Kumar scored 5.0/7 in K-8 u1250 (57th place)
Hugo Kitano scored 5.0/7 in K-5 (33rd place)
Daniel Naroditsky scored 7.0/7 in K-3 (1st place)
Nicholas Nip scored 5.5/7 in K-1 (15th place)

website: http://alchess.com/chess/05/super/?page=STANDINGS&xsection=K12

Congratulations to everyone who played!  I think we all had fun despite the mass of humanity here
in Nashville.  I certainly did have fun.

Michael

P.S. entries for states and regionals next weekend are available on the web

Kirshner (about 650 players) <--- recommended by "fpawn" 
http://www.calnorthyouthchess.org/CalNorthRegionals2005/ENTRIES.html

Peterson (about 300 players)
http://www.chesslogic.com/upcoming.php3?rec=166