2014 U.S. Junior Closed (St. Louis, USA)
According to a press release of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis, the U.S. Junior Closed will commence on June 19th. The tournament will feature most of the top players under-21 and all will be competing for a spot in the 2015 U.S. Championship.
GM Kayden Troff will head the field of talented juniors and will be challenged by 13-year old phenom IM Samuel Sevian. The New York/New Jersey area has half of the participants entered while Missouri has a hometown favorite in Matt Larson. It should be a very competitive field and look out for some upsets!
blitzing after the 2013 U.S. Championship.
Photo by Daaim Shabazz.
June 19th-29th, 2014 (St. Louis, Missouri) |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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#
|
Name
|
Title
|
Federation
|
State
|
Rating
|
| 1 | Troff, Kayden | GM | USA | UT | 2573 |
| 2 | Sevian, Samuel | IM | USA | MA | 2545 |
| 3 | Ostrovskiy, Aleksandr | IM | USA | NY | 2373 |
| 4 | Harmon-Vellotti, Luke | IM | USA | ID | 2515 |
| 5 | Xiong, Jeffery | IM | USA | TX | 2513 |
| 6 | Bodek, Michael | FM | USA | NY | 2486 |
| 7 | Shen, Arthur | FM | USA | NJ | 2458 |
| 8 | Colas, Josh | NM | USA | NY | 2426 |
| 9 | Williams, Justus | FM | USA | NY | 2366 |
| 10 | Larson, Matt | NM | USA | MO | 2215 |
I don’t like Justus’ recent lack of activity…unless he’s hiding a bag of tricks…
obviously hiding a bag of tricks which he just unloaded at the NYACC US Open
Is that where he just got his second IM norm?
Good luck to the young “warriors”!
BTW Daaim, I was in NY a couple of days ago (following FIDE’s Ethics Commission meetings in Greece) and played my debut game in Bryant Park after months of inactivity! Took some interesting pictures and will probably do a report for you sooner than later.
It was total shock when I got the call from the Executive Director of St. Louis with the news that the club wanted to extend an invitation to Josh to play in the US Junior Closed. It was a short notice, so I wasn’t sure if Josh would get school approval to miss 2-weeks of school and regent exams. I reached out to his chess coordinator and fortunately within two days, the school administrators approved the leave. Unfortunately, for the past few days, he’s been sick. I am anticipating that he will fully recover in time for his first game this Friday. It’s great that he will not be there alone, his pal Justus will also be there. It will be very exciting to see how they match up against, “The Young Stars.” Big up to Tony Rich!
Yeah, I didn’t expect to see his name! congrats!
Josh is feeling much better! He just left for St. Louis with his uncle. I wish him and Justus the best!
I am not sure why you didn’t expect to see him Mikhail, but I can tell you that I was stunned because I had expected to see the same kids that are usually invited. But, this year, The Saint Louis Chess Club decided to invite some new faces, which I think is a excellent decision. Of course Josh is one of the underdogs in such a strong field, but that only adds to the excitement of the tournament.
Oh, maybe I’m all confused, Mr Colas. I thought Justus’ result in the Junior Open last year was the reason he clinched an invitation to the the Junior Closed this year. Josh, of course, had lots of great results too, but I thought the Closed was specifically connected to the Open.
Justus did win the Juniors last year and got an automatic invitation. Josh got an invitation because he ‘s a wild card 🙂 . All jokes aside, he’s probably the only kid in that group who got where he’s at on his own and who still doesn’t have any coaching or organizational support behind him. But, for whatever reason he got invited him, I am very pleased.
Bravo! I’m hoping Josh can get a chunk of FIDE points!
Justus beat IM Sevian in only 36 moves and Josh beat IM Harmon-Velotti in only 38 moves! This is going to be interesting…
Well deserved! Congrats to Kayden.
It was certainly a tough one for Josh. His lack of preparation was obvious. Through it all, he finished his last two games with a clear warning. Thank you SLCC.
Congrats Kayden!
It looks like an IM norm was possible with a 4/9! strong tourney! Matt larsen was the only one with a performance rating that differed a lot from his standard raring.
Question:
Does anybody know when and where the 2014 U.S. Cadet Chess Championship will be held. Which players will be participating? I’ve seen no mention of this year’s Cadet on USchess.org
Is there a link to any information, or to the tournament website for the 2014 Cadet Ch.?
CADET will run from 7/19-7/23 in Maryland. Something should be coming out soon on the USCF Website. Xiong and Sevian are not playing.
Thanks for resolving the enigma. Hopefully, the live coverage will be as good as it was last year. Maryland seems to be a good venue.
It will be interesting to see which of the Cadet eligible players fill out the field. The ticket to the 2015 U.S. Junior Closed for winning the Cadet pretty valuable–at least for those who are not a cinch to qualify for the Junior by rating.
I agree with Daaim that there is some redundancy, since some of the tournaments that he listed do cover much of the same ground. Still, we are talking about USCF Scholastic Chess here, and the USCF already sponsors K-6 (K-5) Nationals; K-9 (K-8) Nationals; and the K-12 Nationals–not to mention the Grade Nationals. There’s obviously a market for all of these Championships.
However, there’s hardly a surfeit of quality Round Robin events for Juniors (or for top players, for that matter). Even if the sponsorship should drop out, the costs are modest enough that even the USCF can foot the bill.
Were the USCF to decide that it should drop the Cadet, the very least it should do is give about a year’s advance notice, not just silently or casually let a tournament lapse, one that has been run annual for a number of years.
Hmmm….Finally found confirmation of the field for the 2014 U.S. Cadet. It looks like Awonder Liang WI (2321) just missed out on an invite. The 10th slot must have been a WildCard awarded to the organizers. Since this is an event hosted in Maryland, it is not surprising that a Maryland player was duly invited.
Andrew Zheng is only age 11, the youngest in the field. It will be interesting to see how he fares, since at 2181 he is the Lowest rated player in the field, over 200 points below the Average rating of the rest of the field. He could have a tough event, but my hunch is that he will score a couple upsets, and even avoid finishing in the cellar.
Maryland Chess Association
2014 US Cadet Starts July 19
The MCA will again be hosting the US Cadet Championship this year. This is an invitational for the top under-16 players in the US. This year we have expanded the field to 10 players. The tournament starts July 19th at the Rockville Hilton and the games will be broadcast live The winner receives a scholarship to UMBC and the top three receive free entry to the Washington International. The full field is below.
Mika Brattain 2436 MA 15
Joshua Colas 2430 NY 15
Ruifeng Li 2420 TX 12
Christopher Gu 2417 RI 15
Nicolas Checa 2394 NY 12
Cameron Wheeler 2386 CA 13
Edward Song 2378 MI 14
Andrew Tang 2374 MN 14
Chandran Kapil 2359 CT 15
Andrew Zheng 2181 MD 11
Below is a nice picture of my quiet son Joshua. I got him the tools he needed. His next tournament is the US Cadets; I am looking forward to that one. He got caught off guard at the Junior Closed, but learned a good lesson about opening prep.