UChicago Dominates Chicago Open

Chicago Open 2023 – UChicago sweeps top sections

The University of Chicago sent 16 players to the Chicago Open this past May. Fortunately (or perhaps somewhat unfortunately) this year, the Chicago Open took place right after our Finals week, which allowed our players to relax with some high quality chess after some light and breezy exams.

As with the previous year, I took three byes to start off the event as there was a slight overlap between this event and my last final. Although I was afflicted with a headache and cold (courtesy of Prof. Kotaro’s final exam), it proved to be a heavy advantage as I mercilessly coughed all over my opponents. As my games concluded, I heartily shook hands to ensure maximal transfer of bacterial substances.

Here was the split of our participants:

Open section: Awonder Liang, Praveen Balakrishnan, Kapil Chandran

U2300 section: Orry Marciano, Kai Tsuei, Stephen Eisenhauer

U2100 section: Kole Moses

U1900 section: Miles Brown

U1700 section: Aymane Bouzaidi Tiali, Ryan Wandsnider

U1500 section: Josh Stemczynski

U1300 section: Will Eastwick, Serene Cao, Jack Monday

U1000 section: Elias Manuelides, Alex Gordon

With participants in every section of the Chicago Open, we were set to dominate every section and clean the CCA out. Although it was not meant to be, we came very close in some sections.

In the U1000 section, Elias started with a sizzling 4/4, leading the entire section. Not bad for his first tournament! Alas, rather than focusing on the chess, he lost his mind and started doing Analysis instead in preparation for grad school. Nevertheless, Elias finished with 5/7 (perfect!) and a rating over 1000.

Elias scored the highest out of our math major group, as Ryan finished with 4/7 in the u1700 group, while Kapil finished with 4/8 in the Open section. Kapil, who was fresh off winning the $1000 Physical Sciences Teaching prize at UChicago, was (unfortunately) under the receiving end of several fantastic swindles. Looks like he found some students he couldn’t teach. If we let A be the set of 3 winning positions that Kapil had, and B be the set of possible results, then there exists a bijective function F: A -> B. If we define an operation * on A and B, such that * is…

However, Kapil did have a brilliant checkmate in the third round. Can you find the sequence?

Moving around the Open section, Praveen had a tricky start, taking 3 byes in the first 3 rounds, drawing his 4^th round game, and then taking a 0 point bye to wrap up his essay on Gandhi and 19^th century India. At some point we were questioned by young Tani whether our 7 byes between us was part of some grand strategy. We gleefully informed him that it was a result of real life, and that he too would soon be dealing with its consequences.

Praveen, for his part, had a fantastic swindle in a completely drawn pawn endgame. A classic example of the Law of Large Numbers, which states that if the number next to your name is very very large, you will asymptotically tend to win lots and lots of games.

On my end, I had a fairly smooth event, finishing with 5.5/7, which was good enough to tie for first. Outside of a game which could have been potentially very embarrassing against Chicago’s own Avi Kaplan, I didn’t face any real difficulties in the remaining games.

In my 4^th game, I had a nice checkmate against Jason Wang:

In the u2300 section, there was fierce competition between Kai, Stephen, and Orry. Kai was mercilessly sniping his fellow teammates. Even after upsetting a few 2100s and then defeating Stephen, Kai’s thirst for blood could not be satiated. Kai could occasionally be observed wandering over to Orry’s board, making sure they would have the same number of points in the following round to maximize the likelihood of getting paired.

Here’s Kai’s brawl with Stephen, in a sharp line of the Taimanov Sicilian.

In the end, both Kai and Stephen finished with 3.5/6, a stellar result considering that they were both playing up a section. Orry finished with 3/6, good for a 6 point rating gain.

In the u2100 section, our 4^th board in the Ivy League Challenge, Kole Moses, cleaned house with 6.5/7. Winning game after game before finally giving his opponent a mercy draw in the final round, Kole was an unstoppable force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, Kole’s previous rating high, which was over 2100, meant that he was unable to claim the $5000 first prize, but it was still a phenomenal achievement.

Meanwhile, in the under sections, our players also found good success. Miles Brown took the unusual pre-game preparation approach of psychologically undermining his opponent by obsessively stalking their Instagram, house address, credit card information, and even gained root access on one of his poor opponent’s systems. A creative approach to chess, which should be explored! Miles finished with 4/7, but gained 21 rating points.

Aymane started a bit slowly in the u1700 section but won his last 3 games to finish strong at 4.5/7 – gaining over 100 points in the process! Aymane was one of Morocco’s strongest in his youth, but hasn’t played over the board in years. Although it wasn’t meant to be this time around, next year the u1700 section will surely feel his wrath.

As for the rest of our group, we had Josh finishing with a respectable 4.5/7 in the u1500. In the u1300, Will Eastwick had the largest upset of our group, defeating a 1279 rated player, nearly a 500-point upset! Both Will and Serene finished out on 3/6, while Jack had 4/6.

All told, the UChicago Chess team took a whopping 18 byes across our 16 players. A stunning feat, and a special shoutout to Alex Gordon with 5 byes in 7 rounds – truly, nothing was stopping him. Although Alex probably could’ve taken the entire u1000 section in a physical brawl, it was a rather different story over the board. Not to worry! Alex will take his revenge in the upcoming USAT event, carrying our 4^th board.

Overall, the tournament was a massive success, with many of our players gaining dozens of rating points and having an all-around great time. A special shout-out to both Will and Stephen, as this was their final tournament with the UChicago Chess team – many congratulations on graduating! Stephen was the Vice President of the UChicago Chess Club for the last several years and did a fantastic job.

As an aside, we also had two incoming freshman playing in this event. Yili Wen dominated the u2300 section, starting with 5/5 (and with one bye!), before losing the last round. Even still, this was good enough for a tie for first. NM Yassi Ehsani also scored a strong 4.5/9 in the Open section, with zero byes (booo). We look forward to welcoming them to our chess team next year 😊.

All told, this was a very special event, and we look forward to being back next year - stronger than ever!