Sean Siculiano – Champion of the Week

In this week’s Open Tournament we had 98 students participate with Saket Reddy as our champion with an incredible score of 8.5 out of 9.

In second place we had Sanjey Ramachandran with a great score of 8.5 out of 9 as well. The winner and runner up played an interesting match in their 6th round. Saket opened the game with the Italian Game Classical Variation and the game continued to be equal till the middle game. Sanjey managed to open up Saket’s king abd brought out his queen to pose a significant attack.

On the 26th move, since the position was more or less equal and since Sanjey’s attack was not strong enough, the two players decided to end the game as a draw. Although they both had the same score, Saket was declared the Champion due to the tiebreaker.

In the third position, we had Tejas Karthik with a wonderful score of 7 out of 9 points. 

In our round of tournaments on Sunday, we began the day with our Beginner Level Tournament with Sean Siculiano our champion with an excellent score of 6.5 out of 7.

Sean played an engaging game against Vihaan Sri in the 5th round. Sean opened the game with the Queen pawn and they exchanged their queens early into the game on the 7th move. Sean lost a pawn in the middle game and entered the end game with one rook each and their pawns. Vihaan blundered his rook on the 35th move and Sean gained a major advantage. Sean used this advantage to convert his passed pawn into a queen and Vihaan resigned on the 51st move.

Vihaan concluded the tournament with an amazing score of 6 out of 7 followed by Yajat Biyani in third place who had a score of 3.5. 

In the Intermediate Tournament, we had 53 students participate with Vivaan Bhatt at the top of the winner list with a perfect score of 9 out of 9.

Kinjal Chatterjee, our runner up played an aggressive game against Vivaan in the 8th round. Vivaan opened the game with the Italian Game opening and became a pawn up in the opening. Kinjal brought his queen into Vivaan’s king’s territory which was followed by the two players exchanging both their rooks and entering the end game with their queens and pawns. The two then exchanged their queens as well and Vivaan created a passed pawn before Kinjal could. Vivaan then promoted this pawn into a queen and Kinjal resigned on the 72nd move.

Our second runner-up at this event was Rishab Ghosh with a score of 6 out of 9. 

Sanjey Ramachandran was the champion of the Advanced Tournament with a score of 4 out of 6.

Our runner up, Advit Gupta, also had a score of 4 out of 6 and our winner and runnerup had a tie in their first match. Sanjey opened the game with the Ruy Lopez opening and they exchanged all their minor pieces in the middle game. The two then exchanged their queens and soon exchanged their rooks and entered the end game with one rook each and their pawns.

The two then captured a few of each other’s pawns and Sanjey trapped Advit’s king on the 7th and 8th rank. Sanjey gave Advit’s king perpetual checks forcing the position to be repeated three times. This caused a draw by three-fold repetition.

Sriranga Narapuram was our second runner up with a score of 3.5 out of 6. 

Eshan Kadri was the champion of the Beginner Battle Arena with a splendid win rate of 75%.

Eshan played a tactical game against  Yajat Biyani in the final round. The two exchanged their queens early into the game and Eshan became a pawn up in the middle game. Yajat regained this pawn in the end game which was followed by Yajat posing a serious knight fork on Eshan’s king and rook. This gave Yajat a massive advantage and forced Eshan to resign on 24th move. Yajat concluded this event with an amazing win rate of 89%.

Vihaan Sri was our third seed with a fabulous win rate of 86%. 

In the Intermediate Battle Arena, we had Vivaan Bhatt as our winner for the event with a wonderful win rate of 90%.

Jaden John was our second runner up with a win rate of 53% who played an engaging game against our champion. Jaden John opened the game with the Queen pawn Opening and Vivaan won a pawn in the opening and gained control over the centre. Unfortunately, Jaden made a queen blunder on the 8th move giving Vivaan a major advantage. This forced Jaden to resign making Vivaan the winner of the game.

Adharsh Rajeshkumar was our runner up with with a marvelous win rate of 82%. 

Our final event for the week was the Advanced Battle where we had Adithiyaa Vasudevan as our champion with a win rate of 56%.

In second place we had Sanjey Ramachandran with a win rate of 45%. Adithiyaa and Sanjey played a brilliant game against each other. Sanjey played the Ruy Lopez opening and Adithiyaa brought the queen out early into the game. Adithiyaa did castling on the queenside and brought his queen onto the ‘g’ file in line with Sanjey’s king. Adithiyaa build pressure on Sanjey’s knight which Sanjey eventually moved. When Sanjey moved his knight, he missed a checkmate in one and lost the game.

In third place we had Vishnu Kannan with a win rate of 25%. 

This week saw some interesting turn of events and some fascinating games. We hope to see similar results in the following week as well.

Congratulations to all the winners.