One Week Left, Three Teams Well Ahead: NACCL Week 5 Recap!

There is only one week left in the North American Corporate Chess League's regular season, and the playoff race is tight. The top eight teams in the final standings will qualify for a knockout championship tournament scheduled for May 28, but only three teams are currently far enough ahead of the playoff line to feel comfortable. For Capital One, Jane Street, and JPMorgan Chase, the last week of the regular season will be a battle for positioning in the playoff bracket. For all other teams, week six will be a fight for survival, with eight teams within reach of the remaining five spots. 

The North American Corporate Chess League is an online recreational chess league for members of NA-based companies. During the regular season, players compete within a massive open section and try to score as many points as they can for their companies, facing opponents from a variety of teams. Each "week" consists of three rounds of rapid chess, hosted right here on chess.com every Thursday evening. Once the playoffs start next week, the format changes to a team-vs-team match, with full details about the rules and setup viewable at the league's format page.

Capital One, Jane Street, and JPMorgan Chase form the triumvirate of teams atop the current league standings, with the former in first with 45 points and the remaining two on 43.5 and 43 respectively. No other team is above 40, so it would take an unprecedented and nearly impossible collapse to drop one of these three teams out of the playoffs. Nonetheless, there is an incentive for these teams to fight hard this upcoming week, given that the highest seed will face the lowest-seeded opponent in the first round of the playoff bracket. 

Capital One's IM Craig Hilby would be the league's "most valuable player" if the season ended today, currently in line for the first place plaque in the regular season's individual standings. He is a full point ahead of second-place FM David Peng and has already faced each of the next five highest-scoring players in the league, making his performance even more impressive. He hasn't lost a single game this season, and went a perfect three-for-three this past Thursday including this victory against GM Parimarjan Negi:

IM Hilby is not the only star for Capital One, as all three other players in the team's "starting lineup" have double digit points this season. NACCL final standings are calculated by adding up the four highest scores from each team, although it's worth noting that teams do not need to stick to their regular season "top four" when it comes time to choose a playoff lineup.

Second place Jane Street is also comfortably above the playoff line. NM Christopher Yang took the week off but still ranks in the top ten individually. FM David Peng lost to Lyft's IM Kyron Griffith but remains in second place, while NM Matias Shundi, Dyland Xue, and Max Vasyburd have each contributed ten points this season, with the latter hunting down a king this week:

The third and final team that is all but assured a playoff spot is JPMorgan Chase. This team boasts perhaps the most impressive lineup in the entire league, and it's possible we haven't yet seen the best JPMorgan Chase has to offer. IM Edward Song has only lost one game all season, but he has conceded six draws, having faced five of the other top ten players in the standings, as well as numbers eleven, twelve, and thirteen. If his matchups get a little easier this Thursday, that could bode well for JPMorgan Chase's chances to pass Jane Street and ascend to the second seed. 

Behind Song in the lineup are NM Asuka Nakamura, Vasanth Bhaskar, Calvin Yang, and FM Maggie Feng, each on at least 10.5 points. JPMorgan Chase can also call on FM Alex Bian for the postseason, who is no longer in the team's "top four" due to brutal pairings last Thursday. He lost to both IM Hilby and FM Peng, the two highest-ranked players in the individual standings, but is still on ten points. In the playoffs, it's possible this team could have titled players on every board of the four-player lineup. 

Teams four through eight in the team standings are all between 39 and 40 points. Those are Meta, Google, DRW, Databricks, and Susquehanna, just ahead of PWC and Goldman Sachs each on 38. The only other team with an outside shot is IBM, currently in eleventh at 37 points. With so few points separating the fourth seed from the first team outside the playoff line, no one in this range is safe, although Meta is in the best position of the bunch. NM Warren Wang has played a big role in that, winning all three of his games on Thursday, including this clean takedown of the Grunfeld Defense:

Fifth place Google has six players on either 9.5 or 10 points, but none with more, and no titled players (although Yury Volvovskiy has held a master-level FIDE blitz rating in years past). This makes seeding crucial, because if Google is in the bottom half of the bracket come playoff time, the team will likely face an opponent with multiple titled players in the first round.

Tied with Google at 39.5 points is DRW Holdings, with less depth (hence the lower tiebreak score) but three titled players atop the lineup. It's been a while since all three of them played at the same time, as NMs Andrew Lu and Nicholas Desmarais took this past week off and received three half-point byes. The previous week, Lu and Desmarais played, but FM Igor Tsyganov was away. Unlike many of the other high-rated players in the NACCL, Tsyganov has yet to encounter most of the top players in the standings, which could be a problem if he's back this upcoming Thursday. Still, DRW surely appreciates his production, as he's posted an incredible 8/9 in games played this season.

The final two teams above the playoff line heading into the last week of play are Databricks and Susquehanna. These teams are in serious danger of dropping out of the playoffs if they stumble this week, but they are at least a full point ahead of ninth place. After stalling out a bit midseason due in part to some of the toughest pairings in the league, FM Richard Chen is back to his winning ways for Databricks, posting 2.5/3 this past Thursday. GM Parimarjan Negi had a tough time (1/3 last week) but Evan Ye's two points helped keep the team in playoff position, including this victory against Citadel's Harrison Termotto:

If anyone is going to jump into a playoff position from the outside, the most likely candidate is PricewaterhouseCoopers, with GM Andrey Baryshpolets back in the lineup last week after missing the previous set of games. His attack against Benjamin Blium of Deloitte included a bishop sacrifice on h3, and could be the start of a last-minute playoff push for PWC.

The final three games of the NACCL's regular season will take place this Thursday on chess.com. Next week's post will recap the last week of play and preview the upcoming playoff bracket, so stay tuned!

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NM Dennis Norman

Chess Coach - Club Journalist