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MSJE Chess Team Wins Match Against All-Star Team from Berkeley Chess School

Coach Joe’s Report on the MSJE vs BCS Chess Match in Fremont

On January 20th, 26 members of the Mission San Jose Elementary School (MSJE) Chess Team played a match against an all-star chess team from Berkeley Chess School (BCS). BCS runs chess programs at more than 50 schools in the Bay Area. More than 20 schools were represented by their all-star team.

In a chess match (as opposed to a tournament) the top players from each team play on board one, the number two players play one board 2, etc. In this match each player played two games with the same opponent, switching colors after the first game. The format meant that most MSJE players were playing the top chess players from an opposing school. In addition to being at a disadvantage of one school playing 20 schools, MSJE was missing our top player Kevin Pan, due to illness.

Despite missing our top player, MSJE did very well on the top boards. Aghilan Nachaippan (board 1), Annapoorni Sathappan (board 2) (each team was allowed to play one or two 7th grade graduates) and Nicholas Jiang (board 3) each won their first and second games. On board four Allyson Wong contributed a draw and a win to give MSJE a 7.5 to 0.5 advantage on the top four boards.

After this first round the score was tied 13 to 13. MSJE won round two, 15 to 11 for a 28 to 24 victory.

Other MSJE players winning both their games were Lucas Jiang, Aditya Arulta, Swagatha Selvan, Aidan Ma, Arnam Pawar, and Advita Ranga Ramanujan.

Also competing for MSJE were Stephen He, Aidan Chen, Sai Divyesh Tunguturu. Jolene Liu, Nivedha Manic, Jason Liu, Vivdh Goenka, Artham Pawar, Jainlin Chen, Arnav Gupta, Meghana Satish, Dev Bhatt, and Dhruv Sheth.

MSJE Chess Coaches: Joe Lonsdale, Meiyaps Sathappan, Nachi Nachiappan, Terry and Cathy Liu, Chris Torres

Published by chessmusings

Chris Torres is a nationally renowned scholastic chess coach working in the San Francisco Bay Area. His classes have attracted players of strengths ranging from rank beginners to world champions. A chess professional since 1998, Chris is widely recognized as one of the main driving forces behind the explosion in popularity and sudden rise in quality of scholastic chess in California. Chris Torres served as the President of the Torres Chess and Music Academy from 2005-2020 and currently is recognized as a correspondence chess master with the United States Chess Federation. Since 1998 Chris Torres has taught 6 individual national champions as well as led multiple school teams to win national championship titles. In addition, Chris Torres has directed and taught at 10 different schools which have been California State Champions at chess. In 2011 and 2012, several former and current students of Chris Torres have been selected to represent the United States at the World Youth Chess Championships. Mr. Torres’ hobbies include playing classical guitar and getting his students to appear on the national top 100 chess rating lists.

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