Inland Chess Academy - Scholastic and Adult Chess - Spokane and the Inland Northwest

Inland Chess Academy
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REVIEW
Dragon Slayer Chess Tournament
St. Georges School
Played on March 26, 2022

by Coach James Stripes

Saint George's School hosted the first in-person Spokane youth chess tournament in more than two years on Saturday, March 26. Of the 26 competitors, 24 won at least one game and only one finished the day without at least one loss.

Trophy winners were Ben Patterson, first place (4.5 points). Four players were right behind him with 4.0: Jack Carper, 2nd place; Eshan Reddy, 3rd; Gideon Jones, 4th; and Donovan Bradford, 1st under 800 rating. Second place in under 800 was Kristopher McKethen (3.0). Truman Jones (3.0) was 3rd in under 800. The biggest upset trophy went to Joshua Knapton (2.5). A trophy for top unrated player went to Siena Bayer (2.0).

I observed some interesting games. The youngest participant, five-year old Naman Wadikar seemed in rough shape down a couple of pieces, but was confidently pushing several pawns up the middle of the board. After checking on some other games, I returned to find that Naman had promoted a pawn to a queen and checkmated his opponent. Ben Patterson's systematic technique for completing checkmate with a rook and king against a lone king was instructive. Kelby Wang's two advanced pawns allowed the sacrifice of one pawn to force promotion of the other and create the opportunity for a rook and queen mating net after a few more moves. Excessive material got a few players in trouble as games that should have been wins ended in stalemate. One player wanted to stalemate his opponent (some lessons on the difference between stalemate and checkmate are in his future).

Jack Johnson, an Inland Chess Academy coach, and high school student Arnav Wadikar also did game analysis for those who wrote down the moves of their games. Showing a game score to Jack netted a raffle ticket. Players with five raffle tickets all earned chess piece key chains. A score book, and three chess instruction books were also raffled.

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