Youth Chess News
Illinois Youth: July Top 100 Listings
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- Written by Bill Feldman Bill Feldman
51 Illinois youth have made one of the dozen age-based Top 100 Lists for nationwide juniors.
This includes an all-time high five Masters and seventeen Experts, marking a total of 22 juniors rated 2000 or higher.
Vincent Do will be representing Illinois at the Barber Championships (for K-8's) in Indianapolis starting next week. George Li, on the cusp of 2400, will be representing Illinois at the Denker Championships (for high schoolers) also in Indianapolis.
Liu: First Illinois Junior Female Expert In Recent Times
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- Written by Bill Feldman Bill Feldman
With an impressive performance at the National All-Girls Tournament, 14-year old Miranda Liu becomes the first Illinois female junior to achieve the US Chess Expert title in recent times. As of the official June 2016 ratings, she comes in at 2015. Congratulations to Miranda!
An observant reader of the ICA site wrote in to correct a previous erroneous posting that Miranda was the first ever. Yelena Gorlin became an Expert in 1999 as a high school sophomore at Niles North. Sadly, it appears Ms. Gorlin stopped playing rated chess as of the 2002 Pan American Collegiates in Miami when Yelena was presumably a freshman in college. She went 3.5/6 to raise her rating to 2169. The event also included Yury Shulman, Jennifer Shahade, Eugene Perelshtyn, Irina Krush, and Alexander Onishchuk. It was also Illinois-based NM Hugo Padilla's first USCF-rated event.
May 2016 US Top 100 Lists For Girls
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- Written by Bill Feldman Bill Feldman
22 female juniors have surpassed the 1000 mark as of the May 2016 ratings... with three girls rated above 1900. Actually, one has gone over the magic 2000-mark thanks to her championship performance at the National All-Girls in late April... but you'll have to tune in to a subsequent article to see if that is forever recorded in the June rating supplement.
Tournaments as of April 20 were included in this compilation.
39 appear on one of the Top 100 lists for their respective age group nationwide with eight young ladies in the top 20.
Dimitar Mardov Now Second Ranked Under 7 in US
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- Written by Bill Feldman Bill Feldman
Dimitar Mardov is the number two junior in the US aged 7-and-under as of the May 2016 ratings lists!
Aren Emrikian is ranked 20th in that age group... but is also the fourth-ranked six-year old in the US.
Illinois' two other top 10 players are David Peng, sixth in Age 13, and Jacob Furfine, seventh in Age 14.
The complete table of all 48 Top 100's is below the jump.
YCFC 2015-2016 Season Concludes at Chicago's Burbank; Bateman, Burbank and Skinner North Take Sections
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- Written by Bill Feldman Bill Feldman
The Youth Chess Foundation of Chicago concluded its 2015-2016 season with a May 14 five-round, three-section tournament at Burbank Elementary School in northwest Chicago with 219 competing.
According to organizer Mike Cardinale, this brought the season totals across the six events to 1,834 entries, for an average of 306 players per event. All the events provided free entry with a generous line up of trophies thanks to donations and countless hours of volunteer time. This is Cardinale's 14th year organizing the events.