October - Kailua Scholastic Chess Day G/15, 5 Rds

Oct 13, Windward Oahu saw lots of fast action Blue Angels and 19 quick playing scholastic chess players from just as many different schools almost! The competition was outstanding, time problems did cause some problems for some players but they all took the tournament serious and fun at the same time! And of course the Blue Angels buzzed during the 4th round!

The winner again at a Kailua District Park Scholastic Chess Tournament was Eldon Nakagawa with perfect score of 5.o points (his first win was August 4th), followed by Max Aalto and Evan Zheng with 4.0 points each and both taking 2nd place, prizes were cash and door prizes books and chess equipment!

This was a HICL rated event as well as CXR, and ratings have been updated. The new top player in the HICL is Eldon Nakagawa with William Chen John Iinuma not available for this quick tournament they stayed at their last HICL rating they posted on Sept 29. We hope to see many more players on Nov 12 when the rest of the regular scholastic players normally show up for these scholastic tournaments! With Maryknoll, Kahuku and other schools not sponsoring chess teams, we hope to see more schools such as George Washington Intermediate, Lilihilo Elementary and others to give us new blood and new challenges! many team I noted have one or two players, remember to have the best chance to win team award you need at least 4 players although not required, so if you any school friends who like to play chess get them to join you at these great open tournaments and you never know you may have a dark horse on your own chess team next time!

Do not be surprise if there is another Kailua District Park Scholastic Chess & Go Tournament in December 2007 or January 2008, will give lots of notice if we do have another one! Check http://www.hawaiichess.org/ calendar often!

We did not see any Go tournament players but with the U.S. Youth Go Championship Qualifiers starting up soon, I would not wait to long to get your Go tournament legs on or whatever your waiting for! The winners of the USYGC Qualifier to the USY Go Championships and the winners there are sent to the World Youth Go Championships, so for go players this there big tournament (similar to the Denker & Polgar tournaments in chess)

Mahalo to parents and scholastic players that love to play no matter where we have tournaments, well almost. now this weekend Oct 20 I know I will be seeing some of you playing in USCF tournament, and we'll see if I can pull a few upsets! Note: The Oct 20 USCF tournament is rated by CXR http://www.cxrchess.com/ only those who are current CXR members, but are not HICL rated!

4th Annual Le Jardin Academy Scholastic Tournament!

The first scholastic tournament of the new school year was held Sept 29 at Le Jardin Academy Campus on the Windward side had 104 plus players playing in an open, novice, parents section as well as Demo Go Tournament! LJA Staff & students provided hotdogs and snacks this year! We had a slow start and a few delays and so we ended with a 5 rounds instead of 6 round tournament. The individual Overall co-winners were William Chen and John Iinuma with 5.0 points each, there were was a large group of players with 4.0 points and Eldon Nakagawa took 3rd with a second tiebreaker to win this spot. the rest of the 4.0 players took top awards in the High, Immediate, Elementary & Primary Divisions. In the Demo Go Tournament Chase Kessler continues his winning ways! In the Parents section James Corpuz took 1st.

In the team division Pearl City High School won top honors with 17.0 team points, Kamehameha Intermediate & Kamehameha Elementary came in 2nd and 3rd place respectively, and had to give up the perpetual LJA team trophy, which now has four chess team names on it and so continues to go from one school to another. the other school team winners are Maryknoll 2004 (no chess team this year) Le Jardin Academy 2005, and Kamehameha Schools 2006. Next year PCHS must they must return the LJA Team trophy for the 5th Annual LJA Scholastic Chess Tournament to be held in Sept 2008 on the last Saturday. Check the following link for the rest of the team awards! Next scholastic tournament is Oct 13, same week Blue Angels are visiting Kaneohe!

Hawaii Interscholastic Chess League Standing are posted at HICL, current leader is William Chen followed by John Iinuma and Eldon Nakagawa!