North American Corporate Chess League Season Starts: Week 1 Recap!
Last week, the eleventh season of the North American Corporate Chess League kicked off, with the games being played right here on chess.com! A grand total of 45 teams competed in three rounds of online rapid chess on Thursday evening, representing Week 1 of the NACCL's six-week "regular season."
The North American Corporate Chess League is an online recreational chess league open to members of NA-based companies. The best way to describe the league settings, as per the NACCL's format page, is a "blended individual/team competition," meaning that, at least in the regular season, teams won't face each other directly. Rather, the tournament features a massive open section where pairings are determined by player ratings and points scored. As you might expect, players from the same team won't ever face each other, but two teammates might (and almost certainly will!) face opponents from different teams at the same time. The goal for each player is to score as many points as they can for their company's team.
Since a team's score is made up of the top four individual performers, the minimum team size is four players, with an absolute maximum of 30(!) players per team. At the end of the regular season, the teams with the eight highest scores will compete in a 1 day team-vs-team knockout tournament, planned for June 12 (see the NACCL season schedule here).
The 300+ participants in Week 1's games included three GMs, four IMs, five FMs, and many NMs and experts! Just like last season, Jane Street Capital jumped out to an early lead, as the only team to score a combined 12/12 across their top four boards. Jane Street was again led by FMs Jacob Furfine and David Peng, while NMs Christopher Yang and Matias Shundi also scored 3/3 individually.
Last season, FM Furfine flirted with a perfect individual score in the entire event, and he may well repeat that level of dominance this year. Here's his win against Google's Omar Samara:
Narrowly behind Jane Street is Symetra, with 11.5 out of a possible 12 points through Thursday's games. GMs Vladimir Belous and Andrey Stukopin headline the Symetra lineup, with Belous winning in miniature fashion against Daniel Prado of Ernst & Young.
Stripe A currently ranks in third with 11 points, tied with the aforementioned Ernst & Young. Anduril Industries and Jump Trading are each on 10.5, with Meta (rostering a whopping 29 players!) in seventh place with 10 points. Google and Databricks are tied for eighth with 9.5 points, while five teams are currently tied for the last spot in the top ten with 9 points each. Full team standings through week one of the NACCL can be viewed at this link.
A total of 27 players scored 3/3 individually on Thursday evening, including some very familiar names from seasons past. Those include Capital One's IM Craig Hilby as well as Ernst & Young's deadly duo of Joel Jaffe and NM Sameer Mujumdar. Also perfect was Roland Feng of Anduril Industries, who demonstrated the power of the bishop pair in the endgame:
As you might expect, many of the top individual performers are among the event's highest-rated participants, with all three GMs scoring 3/3 and the four IMs combining for 11/12 as well. However, not all of the perfect scorers were titled players. Here's a great game from Jack Lapinski of Jump Trading, gradually outplaying his opponent in an Exchange French:
Finally, one more untitled player who scored 3/3 was Meta's Mihir Salunke, who took down NM Iskandar Aripov of Cox Communications with a devastating kingside attack.
Full individual standings from week one of the North American Corporate Chess League can be found here. Next week's games will take place on Thursday evening, so keep an eye out for coverage of NACCL Week 2 right here in this blog!
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NM Dennis Norman
Chess Coach - Club Journalist
