- Maria Krassick, at left, and Nancy Brandon, both kindergarten teachers at Rainbow Elementary School, conduct a kindergarten chess club in their classrooms each week. Krassick and Brandon’s commitment to the chess program has been a catalyst for many younger students to start playing chess. CONTRIBUTED
Winter Knights boosts chess players’ endurance for tourneys
Published 7:49 pm Monday, February 3, 2020
MADISON – Columbia Elementary School hosted the fifth annual Winter Knights Tournament on Jan. 18 with 128 students registered in both non-rated and rated sections.
“This tournament originated at Columbia in 2016 to give our kids the opportunity to play games with a longer time control (Game 60/d5),” Ranae Bartlett said. Bartlett is Executive Director of Madison City Chess League.
“A big thank you goes out to Columbia Principal Jamie Hill, Columbia Chess Team sponsor Winona Wilson, Diana Ng for group award photos and all the parents who helped make this a successful event,” Bartlett said.
“This tournament is really about building endurance for national events where the time control for elementary students is Game 90 with a 5-second delay,” Bartlett said. “Not surprisingly, our middle and high school students tend to use their full time more than elementary students, but this is how they learn to play longer games. The skills that are taught through chess games with different time controls are reflective of real life where we have varying amounts of time to perform discrete tasks.”
Students earned the following honors (each list starts with first place and then lists subsequent places:
* Younger section — Annabelle Hsu, Isaac Kreusser, Daksh Sunil, Jackson Campbell, Jacob Kuang, Brantley Davis and Kylie Zou, Top Female.
* Grades 3-4 — Asher Kovacsst, Holland Lang, Caden Jordan, Noah Hsu, Hank Tyrrell, Samsara Rajbhandari, Tim Lee, Sawyer Wright, Shravan Balaji and Emma Kuang, Top Female.
* Grades 5-6 — Danny Seewald, Aadi Saxena, Landon Drummond, Andrew Yang, Eddie Xiao, Kavi Amrhein and Caroline Wang, Top Female.
* Grades 7-8 — Oviya Gowder, Zachary Calinsky, Madhu Balaji, Shruti Kadam, Aasim Musani, Swetha Jakka and Rachael Ehrman, Top Female.
* Grades 9-10 — Om Badhe, Sherwood Dong, Maanasi Limaye, Constance Wang, Shreya Sunil, Edward Calinsky and Kennedy Gore, Top Female.
* Grades 11-12 – Madison Gore, Justin Yoon and Will Bao.
* Non-Rated K-3 – Esinam Tettey, Alice Zou, Isaac Doyle and Hannah Kuang, Top Female.
* Non-Rated K-6 – Arush Sharma, Kyle Baker and Adrian Smith.
