Summer Chess Camp 2010: Inaugural Week Ends As New Camp Director Takes Over!
Week one began and ended in one giant child-filled, frenzy and blur, as nine counselors took on a total of twenty-nine kids, in much the same way three hundred Spartans faced off against a billion Persians during that one time in history. Whereas then, the Spartans were betrayed by one of their own and ultimately fell before reinforcements arrived, the nine coaches learned the Spartan lesson well, and held the campers off, and occupied, for the duration of at least an entire week.
As advertised, and as promised, we had many categories, and prizes for said categories, which helped accomplish the above goal, and allowed us to help distract the kids into doing what we wanted.
The most important of these categories were the chess tournament events we held every day after lunch.
In section two, Sid Wagh won first place with a total of five out of six points with his only loss coming to second placing Zachary Lyandres. Sid was the lowest rated of all four players in the section (he earned 200 rating points in addition to 1st place glory!). Section three, saw two winners as Jacob Tepler took second place with five out of seven points and his only losses to eighth placing Sam Fried, and first placing Preston Wang. Preston’s only loss came to third placing Gregory Volynsky in the first round, and a perfect string of six wins after the fact. Section four, was won by rising ICA’er Brian Hong who scored four-and-a-half points out of six, to overtake Emre Alptuna’s bid for total victory. Section five, saw a neck-and-neck struggle between a double dose of Daniel, as Daniel Klevak defeated Daniel Khaitov in a last day sudden-death game to claim first. Both Daniel’s scored six out of seven points after seven rounds of play, and had to play each other again to determine the winner. Though Daniel Khaitov achieved a superior position utilizing the Fried Liver Attack to the Two Knights Defense in the Italian game, a queen blunder on h3 allowed Daniel Klevak to wrest away the initiative and force a back rank checkmate via a discovered check. Thereby Daniel Klevak took first place, with Daniel Khaitov in second, and Justin “I like funny songs” Zhong in third.
Other chess prizes included an award for the best notated game of the tournament (the requirements being a game lasting more than twenty moves, written without mistakes, and legible enough for even the blindest of people to read easily), and a prize for the best solutions to chess problems. The award for the best notation went to Tomas Leonardo, while the award for the best problem solving went to Zachary Lyandres.
We also awarded a prize to the best student in each individual morning study group. The best students were: Michael Aksen in Diana’s group, Nastya Klevak in Richard’s group, Sam Fried in Ben’s group, Daniel Khaitov (after yet another epic battle with Daniel Klevak that also came down to the last day) in Slava’s group, Justin Zhong in Genry’s group, Emre Alptuna in David’s group, Bertina Kudrin in Kenny’s group, Avi Polotsky in Nathan’s group, and Andrew Volynsky in Arjun’s group.
Besides chess, the sports awards went to Joshua Finn for Dodgeball, and Tomas Leonardo for Soccer. Aside from this we also had an individual sports award for different age groups (based on year of birth) with the winners being: Max Dinenko for the under 1998 age group, Preston Wang in the 1999 age group, Mike Finn, and Phillip Blumin in the 2000 age group, Elisheva in the 2001 age group, Avi Polotsky in the 2002 age group, and Justin Zhong in the 2003 age group.
On Friday, as is ICA chess camp tradition, we organized the camp into groups and “ran” a relay race competition with Arjun’s team edging out Ben’s team after an end of regulation tie on points. Since both teams were tied, a last, sudden death event was called, with the best athlete from each team competing in a single man foot race around a tree really really far away. I say “foot” race because even though both Sid Wagh from Arjun’s team, and David Fikhman from Ben’s team, had shoes on, by the end only David’s sneakers stayed on their owner’s feet, since Sid lost his five feet from the tree. Though the loss proved to be quite humorous it was the only one Sid would suffer as he defeated David in the back stretch to net Arjun’s team the victory. The team consisted of: Sid, Vaed, Andrew, Alex, and Bertina.
Lastly, we awarded a prize for best picture, and even though Bertina’s cheerleading, and singing pawns were awesome, and Mike Finn’s attempt at a three-headed Slava/Dragon was inspiring, Greg Volynsky’s knights slaying dragons was voted the ultimate winner.
Oh, and we also gave Alex Saveliev an award for killing a fly.
We hope to see all of you, and anyone else willing to join next week, and hope to award these and many many more prizes next time.
Stay tuned for week two…
P.S. Our experimental “Master Class” Camp, that is now being run by Sergey ,ended as well, and the results in that camp were as follows:
Ari Shusterman won in sports, and in the problem solving competition, while sharing first place with David Rubenfeld in the main tournament section. Robert “Rob Roy Macgregor” Elliot dominated in Blitz, with Ari S, a respectable second.
If you have a rating around 1600 and would like to sign up definitely let us know.
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