Anduril Takes the Lead, Playoff Races Tighten: NACCL Week 4 Recap!

With only two weeks left in the North American Corporate Chess League's regular season, there's not much time remaining for teams to clinch one of the league's eight playoff spots. The playoff line currently ends at eighth-ranked AFS, with 32.5 points, but every team all the way down to fourteenth-ranked KMPG has at least 30. Meanwhile, Anduril had a great week and has ascended into first place with 35 points, narrowly ahead of Meta and Jane Street with 34.5 each.

The North American Corporate Chess League is an online recreational chess league for members of NA-based companies, featuring a six-week regular season followed by a team-vs-team knockout tournament on November 13 (view the NACCL schedule here). Teams are comprised of up to thirty players, with points from each team's top four individual scorers counting for the standings. Players are paired as individuals within a huge open section, rather than against a specific team, with games held at a time control of g/10+2 and played right here on chess.com every Thursday!

Entering this week's games, Anduril Industries was "only" fourth in the standings with 27 points, but received tremendous contributions from both FM Roland Feng and NM Francisco Guadalupe, each of whom scored 2.5/3 this week against fierce competition. Along the way, Feng defeated Jane Street's FM Jacob Furfine, helping his own team leap into first place.

Feng's teammate, NM Francisco Guadalupe, also scored a win as black against one of Jane Street's top boards, defeating NM Matias Shundi:

FM Feng and NM Guadalupe each have 9.5 points individually out of a possible 12, which puts them in a tie for second in the individual standings. It figures that Anduril is in first place, given that no other team has two players ranked so highly! Also on 9.5 are FM Richard Chen of Databricks, NM Quentin Moore of AFS, and IM Kyron Griffith of Lyft, who didn't play this week and instead took three half-point byes.

The number one player overall is still GM Andrey Baryshpolets, still undefeated with three draws at 10.5 points. Two of Baryshpolets' three draws happened this week against FMs Feng and Furfine, but his third game was a win against another of the competition's top players, IM Craig Hilby of Capital One.

Although GM Baryshpolets continues to lead the individual standings, his team overall has slipped a bit, with PWC falling from first to sixth place this week, now only half a point over the playoff line. Meta, tied with PWC entering Thursday's games, is now second with 34.5 points, tied with Jane Street and just ahead of Databricks at 34 points in fourth place. Other teams that would make the playoffs if the regular season ended today are Capital One, AFS, and Jump Trading, with Lyft just a point behind and a collection of other teams within two points of the last playoff team. Full team standings from the NACCL can be viewed at this link. 

Both AFS and Jump Trading are led by titled players who posted perfect scores this past week. NM Quentin Moore of AFS has now won five games in a row to help push his team into playoff position, while Jump Trading's FM Andrey Krasnov has done the same for Jump Trading, including this win on Thursday:

Another player who posted a perfect score on Thursday is NM Harry Zhao of Databricks, the only player in the individual top ten I haven't mentioned yet in this report! In the following game, Zhao used an unorthodox system against black's KID setup and slowly pushed for an advantage on the queenside:

The playoff race is tight, and there are only two weeks left in the regular season, so be sure to check out next week's blog for more updates on the North American Corporate Chess League!

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NM Dennis Norman

Chess Coach - Club Journalist