This past weekend was the third annual South Brunswick Chessathon. If you haven’t been before, consider putting it on your radar for next year. This event brings together South Brunswick district students of all ages and skill levels for a fun day of competition and community. The event kicked off with a wide variety of activity stations available to participants, including an online arena, puzzle and variant stations, a super cool life-size chess set (picture pieces the size of a small child), and a chess-themed escape room. The most popular station was the simul (short for simultaneous exhibition), an event where one strong player or Master plays multiple games over the board at the same time against different opponents. A well-deserved shout-out to South Brunswick district’s very own National Master, Santhosh Ayyappan. At just 12 years old, he’s already outplaying seasoned high school players, and delivered an impressive performance, playing 5 rounds of 10 simultaneous games, winning every game! This set the stage for a positive and exciting start to the day.
After a pizza lunch, the Swiss tournament got underway. From the very first move, chessathon participants transformed the Annex cafe into a battlefield of minds, where every minute of the game clock pulsed with possibility. This year’s event was well attended with players being matched up based on their performance in the Swiss tournament, not age, which made for interesting pairings. What is a Swiss tournament, you may be asking? A Swiss tournament is a computer based, non-elimination format where players are assigned a random opponent, then from the 2nd round on, you are paired with an opponent with a similar record. It differs from an arena tournament where you play as many games with random pairings as you can in a set amount of time. The Swiss tournament determined the top 16 players that would participate in the over the board tournament.
The over the board tournament was very intense, as players only had 10 minutes on the clock, and were playing single-elimination games. The final match was between Santhosh Ayyappan and Vaisali Garnepudi, another middle-schooler! It took 3 games for Santhosh to notch a win, taking the tournament. The future of the Viking Chess Team seems very bright with these two prospects!
The day wrapped up by bringing everyone together for a moment of celebration of the day’s standout performances by presenting trophies to the top 8 players, and prizes for the top 4. Some of the prizes were: a chess club hoodie, a magnetic board, a voucher for a month of a chess.com diamond membership. Congrats to everyone on the leaderboard!
1st Place: Santhosh Ayyappan
2nd Place: Vaisali Garnepudi
3rd Place: Anushka Ayyappan
4th Place: Tyler Slavin
Top 8: Krish Senthilkumar
Top 8: Ruhaan Kulkarni
Top 8: Jothan Almedia
Top 8: Reynard Shajin Abisha
If you’re looking for a fun club to work out your mind, join the Chess Club on Wednesdays next year!
