2014 Nashville City Champs - Part BOO!

Happy Halloween, ChessKids! This is one of our favorite times of the year in middle-Tennessee as we hold as our annual Halloween Chess Tournament at Meigs Magnet School. This event serves as the second (of three) city championship qualifiers. You can read the first part of this article here. More than 160 ChessKids took part in the 2013 Halloween Qualifier and we saw a lot of scary moves played by kids in cute costumes. 

Two chess princesses battle it out in a tough rook-and-pawn ending 

The Primary Section (grades K-3) saw approximately 40 students participate. Just like the first qualifying event, the top two in each section that have not previously qualified get into the 2014 Nashville Scholastic City Championship. It is held each year at the Nashville Chess Center the first weekend in January. Middleton Henry of Harding Academy and Owen Irving of Julia Green Elementary School both scared the good moves out of their opponents and finished 2nd and 3rd place to qualify. An honorble mention definitely goes out to ChessKid Nathan Dolz of Memphis, Tennessee for finishing first place in this section. However, you must live within a 50-mile radius of Nashville to compete in our city championship. 

In the most highly contested section, the elementary K-6 group, we saw 65 ChessKids duking it out. When the creepy Halloween fog cleared, Aden Barton of University School sat at 5-0 and took clear first place. Emilio Chen of St. Bernard's Academy won 4.5 of his games to qualify in second place. Here is a typical king side crush after destroying your opponent's pawn shield from the champ Aden. 

One of the most entertaining parts of this event for all the ChessKids involved, is seeing the goofiness of the coaches and tournament directors come out. With the amount of candy being consumed by all, its no wonder the coaches end up looking like the picture below. 

"Coach Todd" (aka MusicCityMaster) as the grim reaper and his sister "Coach Tiffany" as a chess alien. 

In the Junior High K-9 Section, John Morphett of Montgomery Bell Academy (to be featured in a ChessKid article soon!) and Saleish Sitaram of Brentwood Middle School drew in the final round to both go to the city tournament. In the high school K-12, Weston Sharpe (who is only an 8th grader!) took clear first and Jing Dai (featured in part I) took second on tie breaks with 3.5 out of 5. Congrats to all the qualifiers!  

Oh the agony of Halloween chess! 

Here's a "treat" - see if you can find the complicated "trick" from this game: