Symetra Cruising in North American Corporate Chess League: Week 4 Recap!

After taking a narrow lead last week in the North American Corporate Chess League, Symetra Financial made big strides this past Thursday and is now all but assured a spot in the knockout playoff scheduled for June 12th. The team's two GMs, Andrey Stukopin and Vladimir Belous, still rank numbers one and two on the individual leaderboard, while IMs Irakli Beradze and Yannick Kambrath are not far behind. 

The North American Corporate Chess League is an online recreational chess league for employees of NA-based companies. The games take place right here on chess.com with a blended individual-team form, where teams are scored on the performances of their top four players across the totality of the season. The top eight teams in the final regular season standings will qualify for a one-day knockout playoff on June 12th. Now that we've passed the halfway point of the season, the race for those top eight spots has begun to heat up!

Just behind Symetra in the team standings are Google, Jane Street, and Anduril Industries, each tied with 33.5 points. Right now the "playoff line" is at 32.5, with the other four teams qualifying as of today being IBM, Ernst & Young, Capital One, and Lyft. Meta and Jump Trading are just outside with 32, and six other teams have at least thirty points and remain very much in the hunt.

GM Stukopin still leads in the individual standings with an incredible 11.5/12. In a battle of the two "board ones" of top teams Google and Symetra, he took down Yury Volvovskiy after a queen vs two rooks endgame.

Stukopin's partner-in-crime, GM Vladimir Belous, remains second in the individual list, but took a loss on Thursday against IM Kyron Griffith of Lyft in an Accelerated Dragon. The game was approximately equal for many moves until white found the excellent 30. Rf1! and quickly created big winning chances thereafter:

While Symetra has been driven by their fearsome lineup of IMs and GMs, Google has remained in a playoff position with strong performances from untitled players. These include Mukund Rao and Md Armughanuddin (each on 8 points) as well as Udai Muhammed, who defeated Meta's Mihir Salunke in the third round this past week:

Other teams above the playoff line have also benefited from great performances from untitled players. IBM's top four include Billy Vidar, Tobi Okusanya, and Sukhminder Bal, each with at least eight points despite ratings below 2000.

The top scorer for IBM, Javier Hernandez, ranks 22nd individually (view the individual standings here) and scored one of the quickest wins you'll ever see in the NACCL last Thursday!

Continuing with our theme of highlighting performances from untitled players on top teams, it's worth mentioning that the top scorer for Capital One is not IM Craig Hilby but rather Jared Gorton! The latter has 9 points and scored a complicated win over Md Armughanuddin of Google to help keep his team in contention:

There are only two weeks left in the regular season, so the playoff race is tight. We'll check back in next week with more updates from the North American Corporate Chess League!

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NM Dennis Norman

Chess Coach - Club Journalist