NACCL Playoff Matchups Set: Week 6 Recap!

The regular season is over, and the moment has arrived. This Thursday evening, the top eight teams from the North American Corporate Chess League will face off in a team-vs-team knockout tournament with a chance to become the league's thirteenth champion. The qualifying teams are as follows:

1. Jane Street

2. JPMorgan Chase

3. Capital One

4. Meta

5. Databricks

6. Google

7. PricewaterhouseCoopers

8. Susquehanna

Eighth-seeded Susquehanna was the "last team in" for the second season in a row, although this time no tiebreak was needed. The playoff line was 45 points, with IBM and DRW Holdings at 44.5 in ninth and tenth place respectively. While those last two teams won't be participating in the tournament on Thursday, they'll at least receive the final two "top ten" plaques!

Although Susquehanna is the lowest seed in the tournament, it was actually seventh-seeded PWC who had the biggest hill to climb heading into the final week of play. Last week's report highlighted PWC as a team with potential to jump into the playoff field from the outside, but in a mild surprise, neither Databricks nor Susquehanna was the team to fall out. Instead, it was DRW Holdings falling from sixth to ninth to make room for PWC, due in part to NM Nicholas Desmarais only playing one of the three games on Thursday, and FM Igor Tsyganov only managing 1.5/3 against a difficult slate of opponents.

That left NM Andrew Lu in a crucial spot, and while he did manage to win two of his three games, his second-round loss to Capital One's Philip Yu proved significant. White emerged from the opening with a slight advantage and kept up the pressure for many moves, gradually exploiting black's weaknesses on d5 and f7.

Despite the above game, it was actually quite a down week for Capital One overall. Heading into last Thursday as the number one seed, Capital One took a big hit as previously undefeated IM Craig Hilby lost two of his three games! With NM Abhishek Handigol also scoring 1/3 last week, Capital One dropped to the third seed behind both Jane Street and JPMorgan Chase.

Here's the first of Hilby's two defeats, this one against NM Deepyaman Datta of Goldman Sachs. There was a chance for the IM to draw by repetition, but he chose instead to play for the win, losing material and suffering his first loss of the season:

Hilby's defeats also put the number one spot in the individual standings up for grabs, and he was indeed caught by Jane Street's FM David Peng. The two each finish on 14.5 out of a possible 18, with FM Richard Chen of Databricks close behind at 14 points. 

The biggest storyline of week six, however, was the player in fourth place, GM Andrey Baryshpolets of PWC. With his team just below the playoff line entering this past week, the second highest-rated player in the NACCL took matters into his own hands. Baryshpolets took down both (!) Peng and Hilby back-to-back in one of the more impressive individual performances of the season, willing his team into the playoffs at the last possible moment. His victory against Peng was a slow-burning Sicilian where it didn't seem like white did anything egregious, but black's two bishops and activity ended up winning the day:

Just behind the top three are Meta and Databricks, finishing on 46.5 and 46 points respectively. These teams entered the final week of play above the playoff line but still vulnerable, and now find themselves set to face each other in the first round of the knockout tournament. While GM Baryshpolets' heroics may have stolen the show, FM Richard Chen went on his own rampage on Thursday evening, defeating three titled players in a row. Sandwiched between a narrow escape vs IM Kyron Griffith and an attacking win over NM Francisco Guadalupe was this tremendous victory against NM Asuka Nakamura of second-seeded JPMorgan Chase:

Last season, Susquehanna made the playoffs due to the tiebreaking procedure, finishing just ahead of ninth-seeded Jump Trading as a result of a higher-scoring bench. This year, no tiebreak was needed, but it was still close! Yury Ustinovskiy took byes this week, and "second board" Nalin Khanna only scored 1/3. Nicholas Brinkmann won two of his three games, but the unlikely hero was Tej Lalvani (who will win an individual plaque this season as well due to being one of the highest-scoring "Class E" players in the event!) with 3/3. 

In the following game, Lalvani exploits a deadly pin down the d-file to win material and help clinch a playoff spot for Susquehanna:

Thursday's knockout tournament will be livestreamed on Twitch and YouTube through chess.com's channels. It's anyone's guess who will emerge from the eight team field, but at least the first round matchups have been determined (pending the fair play check, of course). Top-seeded Jane Street will be difficult to take down, in part because of lineup depth. NACCL teams may choose any players for their four board playoff lineup as long as each player has participated in at least 12/18 rounds this year. This means that Jane Street could conceivably field a lineup of four titled players, with FMs David Peng and Jacob Furfine joined by NMs Matias Shundi and Christopher Yang. Additionally, teams must choose a fifth player to play a tiebreaker game concurrently with the others, and Jane Street has a long list of strong options there, including Max Vaysburd, Dyland Xue, Jason Yan, and Jesse Sun, all of whom scored double digit points in the regular season. 

Despite the dominance of GM Baryshpolets in recent weeks, it would also take a Herculean effort to knock out JPMorgan Chase, which is the only other team in the NACCL capable of fielding an "all titled" lineup (IM Edward Song, FMs Alex Bian and Maggie Feng, and NM Asuka Nakamura). As mentioned last week, Song in particular faced one of the most difficult opposing "schedules" of any player in the league this regular season, and could be due for better results in the playoffs. With many strong players available for the tiebreaker board as well, JPMorgan Chase is absolutely strong enough to win the championship this season. 

Defending champion Capital One took a hit this past week but remains a contender, as IM Hilby may be ready to dominate the playoffs again to take his team to the final. Capital One should be favored in the opening round, but the lineup isn't as deep as either of the top two seeds, so it may be an uphill battle if this team wants to repeat. . 

The NACCL's official website lists all the teams and players receiving plaques based on regular season performance on the team and individual standings pages. Congratulations to all the top finishers, and good luck to the playoff teams! Tune in this Thursday to see what may be a thrilling conclusion to the thirteenth season of the North American Corporate Chess League.

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NM Dennis Norman

Chess Coach - Club Journalist