Prairie Chess Series October

On Saturday, October 24th, 57 youth gathered on a fine day to vie for trophies in 4 different sections. K-3, K-5, K-8 and High School. All sections played 5 games of G25;d5. A big thanks to Josh Sevcik and Ryan Mitchell for helping TD this tournament.

Gaga ball, a popular between round activity

K-3 top 5

To no one’s surprise our youngest section blitzed through their games quite rapidly and while Siddarth looked like a buzzsaw in the first four rounds he ran into trouble in a big round 5 upset when Reyansh Karrrotu took him down. We had 13 players in the K-3 and 5 who had never played a tournament before!

First time tournament players got a medal

High school top 5

Our high school section played nearly as quickly as the youngest crowd and with only 5 of them they were done shortly after lunch. Miles Howard and Asim shivapur played up to their rating and beat all the new tournament players with Asim ultimately winning the section.

Of course all students should return on November 14th for another tournament. Especially because TEAM trophies will be awarded on that day. Current team standings are below (top 4 players per school district per section):

K-3

1. Prairie (9) (William, Autumn, Braxon and Finley)

2. LinnMar (6.5) (Sarvad + Aahil)

3. IowaCity (6) (Suvir and Felix)

4. Coralville (3.5) (Martin)

K-5

1. LinnMar (11.5 points) team of Shreyan, Anaya, Lance and Liam

2. Prairie (10 points) team of Everett, Ethan, Annabelle and Carter

3. IowaCity (9 points) team of Ayleen, Ayansh and Kira

4. Urbandale (5 points) team of Swan Yay

5. Coralville (2 points) team of Jiyan

K-8

1. LinnMar (13 points) team of Nikshay, Siddharth, Niksheeth and Tarun

2. Iowa City (7 points) team of Chaitra and Jagat

3. Prairie (5 points) team of Aaron and Jack

4. Easton Valley (4 points) team of Keegan and Colin

5. Cedar Falls (3.5 points) Joel VerDught

6. Waukee (3 points) team of Svanik

7. Isaac Newton Christian Academy (1.5 points) team of Jude

HIGH SCHOOL

1. North Liberty (5 points) team of Asim

2. Coralville (4 points) team of Miles

3. Iowa City (2.5 points) team of Teddy

4. LinnMar (2.5 points) team of Zach

5. Easton Valley (1 point) team of Jakobi

The K-5 section was our largest contest of the day with 19 players. Swan Yay Tun ran the field with a perfect score and we nearly had to cut a trophy up because 5th-8th all tied with a ⅗ score but Ethan Klosterman took home the GOAT trophy 5th place had a goat head).

Our K-8th grade section used all their time and played until nearly 4PM when Nikshay defeated Chaitra (playing up from K-5) to create a tie at the top of the standings! Like the earlier sections we had a big logjam with 5th-9th tied but the kids wouldn’t let me saw the trophy into multiple pieces for them to each take home part so it went to Aaron Wong on tiebreaks.