Defending Champ Capital One Back in First Place: NACCL Week 3 Recap!

At the halfway point of the North American Corporate Chess League regular season, defending champion Capital One has taken sole possession of first place. IM Craig Hilby, Capital One's superstar from season's past, leads all players in the individual standings with an 8.5/9 score, while three teammates (NM Abhishek Handigol, Philip Yu, and Maury Ahram) have seven points each. As daunting a challenge as it might seem, there's still a chance for several other teams to catch Capital One, or, failing that, take down the reigning champions in the knockout playoff tournament scheduled for May 28. 

The North American Corporate Chess League is an online recreational chess league for members of NA-based companies, with players competing in three rounds of rapid chess every Thursday evening throughout the regular season. Although teams may have as many as 30 players, only the top four scores from a given team are counted for the league standings, with remaining player scores serving as potential tiebreakers. During the regular season, teams don't face each other directly, with players instead participating in a massive open section and trying to score as many points as possible for their respective companies. For more detail about the NACCL's rules, see the league format page here.

Last week's standings saw Capital One and Jane Street Capital tied with 19.5 points each, but Capital One's third and fourth boards (the aforementioned Ahram and Yu) scored a combined 5.5/6 this past Thursday, outdoing their Jane Street counterparts. Yu in particular has been performing at a very high level, drawing two of the top players in the field. Last week it was FM Alex Bian he held to half a point, and this week it was IM Edward Song of JPMorgan Chase.

IM Hilby defeated three titled players this week, vaulting himself to sole possession of first place in the individual standings, while his team soared to first in the overall standings as well. Only IM Kyron Griffith of Lyft has managed to hold Hilby to a draw so far, and only FM David Peng of Jane Street is within half a point of Hilby individually.

Another team that saw great success this past Thursday was JPMorgan Chase, whose top four did just enough to pass Jane Street and move into second. FM Alex Bian is JPM's highest-scorer, and he played several flashy moves against Meta's David Airapetyan:

Perhaps the most surprising team in this NACCL season so far has been Google, currently ranked fifth (tied with DRW Holdings). Unlike all other teams in the top five, Google doesn't have multiple titled players atop the lineup. In fact, they have none at all (!) with the caveat that Yury Volvovskiy has had a master-level FIDE blitz rating for many years without receiving a standard rating. Yet Volvovskiy, Chase Knowles, and Kevin He each have at least 6 points this season. The latter was in deep trouble after Nalin Khanna uncorked a devastating tactic, but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good:

With 6.5 points in his last 7 games, dating back to week one, NM Kevin Carl is also climbing his way up the individual leaderboard. His Neuroflow team, as far as this author is aware, has probably never before been covered in NACCL recaps, and currently ranks well below the playoff line at 23rd place (out of 40). Yet Carl is stringing together one of the more impressive non-Hilby performances by any player in the league, which included a draw as black against GM Baryshpolets of PWC (which he very nearly won!), and this victory over Nicholas Brinkmann of Susquehanna:

While Kevin Carl was up to the task against a GM last week, he may receive more tests this upcoming Thursday, as he hasn't yet faced any other players in the top five. In contrast, FM Richard Chen (Databricks) entered Week 3 as the only player with an unblemished record, but he had the misfortune of facing both of the top two players (as of the current standings) in the entire field back-to-back. After losing as black to Hilby, Chen was also defeated by fellow FM David Peng of Jane Street in a Scotch.

Despite these losses, FM Chen still ranks within the top ten individually, and his Databricks team is currently tied (although behind in the tiebreakers) for the last playoff spot with Plante Moran and Susquehanna, all on 24 points in the team standings. 

As playoff races intensify, keep an eye out for further coverage of the North American Chess League right here on this blog. For more, check out the VOD of Kayden Troff's live commentary of the week 3 games on the ChessSharkz Twitch channel!

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NM Dennis Norman

Chess Coach - Club Journalist