Chess Update, April 17

The Middle and Upper School chess season came to a close on Wednesday, April 16th.  Forty Eight students from Greenwood, Homeschool, Legacy, MCA, and Trinity competed over the past three weeks.  After the first session, Trinity was in fourth place.  After the second session, Trinity was in third place.  And after this final session, Trinity improved to tied for second place.  Final scores were: Homeschoolers 32.5; Trinity 26; MCA 26; Greenwood 21; and Legacy 14.

 

I saw several good games from our team.  In game one I saw Noah Shaffer in an end game where he had a rook and a king versus Liam Rooks from Greenwood with only his king.  Check mating with only a rook and a king is something that many chess players struggle with.  Noah had just learned how to do this checkmate two weeks ago.  I was very proud to see him easily get the win!  Fitting that Noah did the ‘rooks’ checkmate versus someone named Rooks.  Noah ended up with two wins on the day. 

 

In game two I saw Katie Li go down a rook versus Luis Torres from Greenwood.  Usually being behind by a rook in the middle game is difficult to overcome, so I walked around the room checking other games.  When I came back, she had already won.  Nice comeback Katie...still not sure how you did it.  Katie ended up with two wins on the day. 

 

Also in game two, I saw Ollie Mathewson go up an exchange (rook for bishop) versus Easton Castro from MCA.  Ollie kept building on this small lead by making trades and picking off pawns.  Ollie is strong in the end game, and he ended up wining easily.  In fact Ollie won all of his games this day. 

 

One other player that excelled on this day was Charles Dorman who also won all three of his games.  Overall, Trinity had a fine day and a good tournament. 

 

Here are our top overall performers:

Oliver "Ollie" Mathewson tied for fifth place with 6.0 points;

Ebubechukwu "Joshua" Okoli  tied for eleventh place with 5.0 points;

Christianne Meyer tied for sixteenth place with 4.5 points.