Meta and Symetra Lead North American Corporate Chess League: Week 2 Recap!
Through two weeks of the North American Corporate Chess League's new season, very little is decided. Out of the 45 teams participating, almost half the field is within three points of first place! Meta and Symetra are currently tied for first at 19 points, with nineteen(!) other teams totaling between 16 and 18.5 points out of a possible 24.
The North American Corporate Chess League is an online recreational chess association featuring a six-game regular season and a "knockout" playoff. Chess players representing North American companies form teams of up to thirty players, with the top four scorers for each team counting towards the overall standings. Importantly, the standings are based on player totals through the whole season, meaning that the players who make up a team's "top four" (and therefore the team's overall score) might change week-to-week. Games are held right here on chess.com at a time control of 10 minutes plus 2 seconds of increment.
After the first week of play, Jane Street Capital had the only perfect score in the tournament with 12 points out of 12 possible, but things didn't quite go to plan for Jane Street this time around. Both of Jane Street's FMs, Jacob Furfine and David Peng, had the unenviable task of facing Grandmasters with the black pieces, and neither one was able to hold.
Capitalizing on black's very weak king in a queenless middlegame, GM Andrey Stukopin was able to take down FM Furfine and help vault Symetra past Jane Street in the standings.
While team Symetra boasts two GMs (Stukopin and Valdimir Belous), the other team tied for first doesn't have any FIDE-titled members at all! That's not to say Meta doesn't have excellent players, as both Warren Wang and Praveen Sanjay have the USCF NM title, but neither one ranks among the team's top four in the current standings. Rather, it's been a lineup of experts and A-players carrying the team, including Mihir Salunke (featured in last week's recap) and Pat Sukhum, each on 5/6 individually.
Here's Sukhum's win over IBM's Raunak Bhansali, featuring a Botvinnik-Carls Variation in the Caro-Kann:
Meta and Symetra are tied atop the standings with 19 points each, but there's no shortage of competition close behind. Ernst & Young, Jane Street, and Airbnb each have 18.5, just half a point off the lead, while eight (!) other teams have either 18 or 17.5 points behind them. The full team standings through two weeks of the NACCL can be viewed here.
Out of the 27 players who scored 3/3 in the first week of competition, only two of them managed to duplicate the feat last Thursday to maintain a perfect record. Those two are FM Roland Feng of Anduril and GM Andrey Baryshpolets of PWC, whose teams have 17.5 and 17 points respectively. In the first round this past week, Feng took down Yury Volvovskiy of Google, whose pieces found themselves running out of space in a La Bourdonnais French.
And here's GM Baryshpolets taking down NM Matias Shundi, stranding white's king and then overwhelming his opponent with active and centralized pieces:
Just behind FM Feng and GM Baryshpolets on the individual leaderboard are three players with 5.5/6: the aforementioned GM Andrey Stukopin, FM Andrey Krasnov of Jump Trading, and IM Kyron Griffith of Lyft. The former two players drew each other and won all their other games, while the latter was able to execute a Greek Gift sacrifice against NM Yusheng Xia.
Full individual standings from the NACCL can be found at this link. As always, the next round of the North American Chess League will be held on Thursday evening right here on chess.com!
-------------------------------------------------------------
For upcoming tournaments, bookmark our Events Schedule. The CCC hosts nearly 8 events a week at our facilities in North and South Charlotte, along with bi-monthly major events!
Not a member of the CCC? Join over 1000 members today!
NM Dennis Norman
Chess Coach - Club Journalist
