DHS tops individual and team leaderboard at 6th Dublin Scholastic Championships!
Riding Dublin’s continued emergence as a Bay Area youth chess powerhouse, the 6th Annual Dublin Scholastic Chess Championship drew its second-largest and strongest field on Sunday, Sept. 19th.
141 players competed in the Chess.com-hosted tournament, which is more than double the attendance of our first tournament in 2016. This included about 20 players from DHS, who did very well in the tournament, with half of them winning trophies, mostly in the top two sections. DHS also won the Shamrock Cup team competition for the first time (more details below).
Using a relatively fast time control of 10 minutes per game plus 2 seconds per move, the 6-round tournament ran for 2.5 hours and was divided into three sections. The Championship and Premier sections for experienced tournament players will be rated via both Chess.com and US Chess Federation as a Quick-rated online tournament. The unrated Challenger section was limited to newer players with USCF over-the-board ratings under 500 or unrated.
As the tournament was USCF-rated and with prizes awarded, the organizers took steps to minimize players’ getting outside help from chess software or other players. Zoom video of players' faces during their games was reviewed by organizers. Their game moves were also analyzed by Chess.com’s anti-cheating algorithm and Fallon coaches.
Championship section: The player caliber in the 50-player Championship (1000+ rating) section was stronger than ever, with 11 players sporting USCF over-the-board ratings of 1200+ and many with Chess.com ratings over 1400.
DHS freshman Vikrant Ganesan scored a perfect 6-0 to win the clear first prize over 49 other players. DHS's Arunachalam Kasi, Aavi Bharucha and former champion and DHS sophomore Katherine Pask took the 2nd, 3rd and 4th spots respectively (by tiebreak) with a score of 5.0 points. Last year’s co-winner, nationally-ranked DHS freshman Krish Matai, took the 5th spot with a score of 4.5 points.
Tying for sixth place were Rohan Nihalani, DHS junior and former champion Thaneesh Bedadham, DHS's Sanat Gupta and Romir Hiremath, Neal Sundar, Preron Chakrabarty, and Daniel Wu with a score of 4.0 points.
DHS's Sahil Sandasani and Suriya Gananasundar and Bishal Das were the top 3 players in the U1200 category.
Premier section: Fallon Middle School 8th graders Jay Pasupuleti and Raghuram Voleti won the 1st and 2nd prize respectively with a score of 5.0 points. Tyler Yim, Isaac Sahong Lee, DHS 9th grader Ishaan Gupta and Paarth Agrawal secured the 3rd - 6th spots, all tying with a very strong score of 4.5 points.
Rayan Jain from Amador Elementary played really well to grab on tiebreaker the 7th spot with a score of 4.0 points. Also tying for 7th place were: Shivish Aneja and Akshaj Nadendla with 4.0 points.
Amulya Medarametla, DHS sophomore Sricharan Prasanna and Mihir Korupolu were the top 3 players in the U800 rating category.
Challenger section: Aaron Bhagat played superbly and won the first prize in this section with a score of 5.0 points. Six players tied for second with a very strong score of 4.5 points - Kunzhong Wang, Pranav Vivekanandan, Charles Ruan, Sanjith Satish, Krish Desai and Viren Goel.
Rounding out the trophy winners in a tie for eighth place were Nayan Kolpuru, Veda Raman, Amelia Shah, and Avery Sue with 4-2 scores.
All winners will be contacted via email about arrangements to safely pick up their trophies.
List of trophy winners: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uvM6TvL0FceSCN55RIlrICI21pDCuD-jrRe1e8yIbLI/edit?usp=sharing
Full results in
Finally, in the informal team competition between Dublin schools called the Shamrock Cup, Dublin High School won scoring 25 versus 24 for Fallon Middle School. This was the first year DHS won, with Fallon having won the two prior years, 2020 (26 - 21 over DHS) and 2019 (21 - 14 over DHS). The top five scorers from the Championship and Premier sections counted towards the team score. Thanks to Vikrant Ganesan, Arunachalam Kasi, Katherine Pask, Krish Matai, and Ishaan Gupta for helping DHS win the team trophy!
Thanks to all of the players -- whether or not they won a trophy, they all competed hard and gave a strong effort. Thanks to the Fallon parent organizers: Megha Chowdhary, Amrita Chowdhary, Sumit Aneja and SriBharthi Vinoth. Special thanks to the Fallon chess club parent organizers (Ganesan Ramu, Sushmitha Sudini and Eric Lai) from last year for their ongoing support and guidance. And thanks to the Fallon PFC for their ongoing support of the club.
