USCF Tournament Updates – 20th December

Charles Joseph was our champion for a second time in a row in the Open category with a score of 4.5 out of 5. 

We had Shalini Joseph in second place with the same score, however Charles secured the first position due to the tie breaker. Charles and Shalini drew against each other in the second round by mutual agreement, however the most remarkable game of the day was between Charles and our second runner up Aarav Patel who completed the tournament with a score of 3.5 / 5.

Charles played the queen pawn opening and posed an aggressive threat to Aarav’s king in the middle game. While Aarav was trying to defend this attack, Charles developed more of his pieces to stregnthen this attack. Charles managed to open his ‘h’ file rook making his attack strong and allowing the rook to control the file. On the 17th move, Aarav made a blunder allowing Charles to checkmate him in one move. 

In the the Under 1000 category, we had Ishant Gandikota as our champion with a score of 4.5 / 5.

Ishant played an incredible game against our second runner up Hemanth Samayamantri, who completed the tournament with a score of 3.5 / 5, in the 3rd round. Ishant played the Italian Game Opening and on the 19th move Ishant trapped Hemanth’s bishop. The game then continued with Hemanth trying to improve his pawn structures and Ishant trying to trade the pieces due to his advantage.

The two players entered the end game with Ishant having a bishop and 5 pawns and Hemanth having 7 pawns. Hemanth made a queen on the 56th move and won the game with a king queen checkmate on the 72nd move.

In the second place we had Ishaan Singh with an amazing score of 4 / 5. 

Lakshmi Nikhil was the winner of the Under 500 category with a perfect score of 5 / 5.

Lakshmi played an interesting game against our second runner up Vivaan Singh who had a score of 3.5 / 5. Vivaan played the Queen pawn opening and the game was relatively equal till Vivaan made a knight blunder on the 16th move. On the 20th move Vivaan blundered his queen, giving Lakshmi a massive advantage. On the 27th move, Lakshmi blundered her queen as well making her a knight up, over all, in the end game.

In the end game, Vivaan blundered his rook making the road to victory easy for Lakshmi from there on. On the 55th move, Lakshmi checkmated Vivaan. In the second place here, we had Sanmay Rathi with an excellent score of 4 / 5. 

The perfect scorer and the champion of the Unrated section was Adithiyaa Vasudevan as he won all the games at this event.

Adithiyaa’s best game of the tournament was against our runner up, Raghav Senthil Kumar who had a score of 4 / 5. Adithiyaa played the Ruy Lopez opening and lost a bishop and a pawn in the opening. A few moves later, Adithiyaa captured Raghav’s rook. Raghav won Adithiyaa’s rook too, later in the game. Adithiyaa drove Raghav’s king out and managed to corner Raghav’s king on the ‘h’ file. Adithiyaa opened his rook file and strengthened his attack on Raghav’s king. The attack became strong enough for Raghav to resign on the 25th move.

Our second runner up for the event was Ansh Gupta with a score of 3 / 5. 

The results for this month’s tournament were overwhelming and exciting and we hope to see similar results in the next month as well. 

Congratulations to all the winners.