Oct 2024 at Cottonwood Creek

114 players persevered through a 3-hour power outage at our Oct. 12th Tri-Valley Open at Cottonwood Creek School in Dublin.

They competed for 35+ trophies and nearly $400 in cash prizes.

The 14-player Open section was won by Emerald HS freshman Aavi Bharucha, who went a perfect 4-0 to win the $100 first prize.

Jaison Acharya and Michael Liu tied for second with 3-1 scores to take home $62.50 each. Harshit Ramesh and Dublin HS’s Shreyan Goli split the $50 prize for Top U1200.

Sunol Glen Elementary’s Arjun Patil and Fallon MS’s Rayan Jain tied for first in the U1200 Experts section with undefeated 3.5/4 scores and shared the $100 first prize.

Aneesh Banerjee took 3rd on tiebreak over Jayant Somashekar, while Nathan Nemirovsky won the 5th place trophy on tiebreak over Reyansh Nuti, Naman Jain, Shlok Narayan, and Ansh Ankit Doshi. Viren Sethi and Kaison Reed won the top 2 U1000 prizes.

In the 34-player U800 Premier youth and adult section, Kaarthike Maddula went a perfect 4-0 to take first over Adrit Nudurupati in second with 3.5/4.

There was an eight-way tie for 3rd with great 3-1 scores. In tiebreak order, they were: Rishi Krishnan, Pratham Jain, Gautham Prasanna, Sebastian Karagozlu, Krish Desai, Nolan Woo, Adhvik Nuti (who won the Top U600 trophy) and Aarush Noothi. Simha Santosh Tulla won 2nd place, U600.

In the 25-player K-12 U400-rated Challenger, Advaith Aiyer went a perfect 4-0 to win first, followed by Elaina Japson in second with 3.5/4. Four players tied for third place at 3-1: Wells Middle School’s Saiansh Rastogi, Vihaan Annam, Fallon’s Chris Ephraim, and Suryap Rangadurai. Vivaan Salian won Top U200, while Eileen Zhang won 2nd place, U200.

Finally, we had 18 competing in the non-rated Novices section for first-time youth players.

Trophy winners from the six-player round-robin groups (requiring a minimum score of 3.5 out of 5) were:

1) Namish Shrivastava and Cottonwood Creek's Michael Haddad (tie 1st)

2) Yash Shah and Knish Devadoss

3) Aditya Ashwin and Sahil Vaishampayan

Final Standings: https://www.caissachess.net/online-registration/index/5056

US Chess Federation-Rated results: https://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?202410127372.0

Big Thank Yous! from the lead organizers and tournament directors – Emerald Hills Chess’s Eric Lai and Bhavna Jain, and Tri-Valley Chess League’s Aryan Kumar and NM Aryan Achuthan) to:

Our floor TDs - Ekam Dhot, and from the Tri-Valley Chess League - Aryan K, Aryan A, Austen Yee, and Aryan Nudurupati

Jacob Muller and Heena Gandhi of Mathnasium Pleasanton/San Ramon for sponsoring the cash prizes

Cottonwood PFC for their support of this tournament as well as our competitive Tuesday after-school chess club - more info and register here: https://bit.ly/4f0E3e4

We will return to Fallon Middle School for our next half-day Tri-Valley Open on Saturday November 16th. It will again be open to youth AND adults, and feature 35+ trophies and $375 in guaranteed cash prizes in the top sections.