USCF Tournament Updates – January 2021

In the Unrated Section Tournament held on 10th January, we had Alex Forman as our champion with an admirable score of 4.5 out of 5. In second place we had Pranav Kandibanda with a score of 4 out of 5 followed by Havish Venkat with a score of 3.5 out of 5.

In the third round, our champion and second runner up played an intense match against each other. The game began with the Italian Game Opening and Alex gained an advantage in the opening by gaining a pawn and invading Havish’s kingside using his bishop. Soon Alex got his queen into play to strengthen this attack. Unfortunately for Alex, this attack faded when the two players exchanged their queens and they entered the end game.

The end game was between their two kings, two pawns each and a bishop each of the same colour. On the 66th move, the position on the board had been repeated thrice consecutively and the game was declared a Draw by Three Fold Repetition. 

On January 17th we had our Under – 500 category tournament where the most interesting game was played between Reyansh Bansal and Jun Ichikawa. Reyansh opened the game with the Italian Game and Jun won a pawn in the opening and gained control of the centre.

Jun then bought the queen to Reyansh’s kingside and posed a strong attack on Reyansh’s king. Jun then brought the rook to the ‘h’ file to make this attack even stronger. On the 25th move Jun checkmated Reyansh with the Queen on the h2 square. Although Reyansh lost this game, he successfully was declared the winner of this event with a final score of 4 out of 5. Jun followed him in second place with the same score, but was placed second due to the tie breaker.

In third place we had Sabarish Kailasam with a score of 3.5 out of 5. 

The Under-1000 category saw Shiven Patel at the top of the winner board with a perfect score of 5 out of 5. Shiven’s final match was against the runner up of this event Ishaan Singh, who completed this event with a score of 4 out of 5.

Ishaan started the game with the Scicilian Defence and Shiven traded his two minor pieces for a rook and a pawn in the opening. In the middle game, Ishaan made a bishop blunder, giving Shiven a decent advantage. The two then traded queens and entered the end game and Shiven used his gained advantage to create a passed pawn that he promoted into a queen. Shiven then went on to make another queen and checkmated Ishaan with two queens on the 53rd move.

Our second runner up at this event was Aneesh Adusumilli with a score of 4 out of 5.  

In the Open Category Tournament held on 31st Januray we had Shalini Joseph as our champion with an incredible score of 4.5 out of 5.

Shalini’s first match was an extremely engaging one that she played against Shawn Pealer. Shalini began the game with bringing her knight out and gained a slightly stronger control of the centre than Shawn in the opening. In the middle game, Shawn posed a significant attack on Shalini’s king. In reciprocation Shalini used her rook and ‘f’ pawn to invade Shawn’s kingside. Shalini’s attack was strong enough to drive Shawn’s king outside the comfort of the 8th rank.

On the 27th move Shawn resigned due to forced checkmate in the next two moves. The runner up of the event was Adithiyaa Vasudevan followed by Charles Joseph in third place and both these players concluded the event with a score of 4 out of 5. 

The USCF tournaments held this month saw some exemplary results and some fresh names on the winner board. We hope to see similar results in the following month as well and hope you enjoyed your participation at this event.

Congratulations to all the winners !