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