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!

North American Youth Championships

Hawaii's Scholastic Champion Robert Lau takes 1st in the under 16 "Boys" section in Mexico at the North American Youth Chess Championships held Oct 5 -7. The top player in sections U 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 will receive the FIDE Candidate Master or Woman Candidate Master Titles. according to FIDE Handbook. Congrats Robert and

U.S. Team results & games from USCF web site

Boys Under 16- Robert Lau- 7/7, gold medal
Girls Under 16- Nicole Maffeo 4/6
Boys Under 12- Aleksander Ostrovskiy (6/7, silver medal) and Michael Chiang (4.5/7)
Boys Under 10- Aaron Schein (4.5/7)
Girls Under 10- Claudia Munoz (5/6, gold medal)
Boys Under 8- Raymond Sun (7/7, gold medal), Tanuj Vasudeva (5/7, bronze medal) Ian Gilchrist (4.5/7), Eduardo Gonzalez (3/7)
Girls Under 8- Simone Liao (5/5, gold medal)

Hope if years to come we can more USA and Hawaii players play in these types of events, but will need sponsors or lot of car washes! Nov 12 is Hawaii's next scholastic tournament where Robert and many others will be playing to see who will next year's Scholastic Champion.

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!

Hawaii Speed Championship

Robert Lau and Paul Iinuma were this year's winners in a field of 16 speedy players! Both scored 12.0 points out 14. Chet Gionson came in 3rd with 11 points. Tournament was held at "The Town Center of Mililani".

National and International tournaments this summer!

Aloha,

Lots of chess news will keep it brief. Summer had several players going to the mainland, the two most notable is Charles Sonido to played in the Denker (Tournament of State Scholastic Champions) and the U.S. Chess Open and he did very well in his rating division almost winning first in the U.S. Open division he was in. Also Larry Reifurth was the only adult from Hawaii this year to play in the U.S. Chess Championship Open he came away with good score, he also attended the USCF meetings that govern USCF functions and elections.

Robert Lau played in the Cadets tournaments as well as the World Youth Chess Championship under 16 on board #2 of the USA team #1.

Sept 1-3 Hawaii State Championships was held and Cornelius Rubsamen and Eric Mui manage to easily win the tournaments and so are now co-champions of Hawaii, both have won this title before we hope to see them often at local Hawaii tournaments, not just in the Championship tournaments! But with work schedules and making a living in Hawaii well that is not always possible.

Sept 22 is the Hawaii Blitz Championship followed the next weekend with the first scholastic tournament of the season at Le Jardin Academy on Sept 29 on the Windward Side in Kailua.

See http://www.hawaiichess.org/ for additional details and schedule for the rest of the season. All Hawaii tournaments continue to be rated by CXR http://www.cxrchess.org/ including USCF tournaments that have CXR players playing in them.

Notice: Windward Chess & Go Club is a a few weeks from possibly returning to Windward Mall, will keep you posted, date of meeting and times may change, but after 18 months of waiting for Windward Mall to finish their renovation its most welcome to be returning! So we hope to see soon where ever WCGC is meeting, its your club, we want Border's Bookstore to know we appreciate their offer to let us meet in there venue!

Reminder: Do not forget to renew your USCF and CXR memberships especially if your going to be playing in Hawaii and national tournaments.

Windward Chess & Go Club now meeting again in Kaneohe!

Aloha Windward Chess & Go Club players,

We have finally moved again "just temporary" until its decided where to place us in Windward Mall.

Windward Chess & Go Club will be meeting at Starbucks Coffee in Kaneohe, across the street from Zippy's and Windward Mall! See http://chess.meetup.com/9 for map and details also see http://www.windwardchess.org/.

Border's Bookstore is open, but still arranging things and their Starbucks will not open until August 3rd, plus we are still waiting for headquarters & mall's approval, etc.

Windward Chess & Go Club has been away from the Windward Mall now for 16 months, it was only suppose to be or 12 months, but some changes have occurred and we are hoping to be allowed to meet somewhere near or in Border's. it will be similar to the Starbucks Coffee Shop that we are currently planning to meet in. So we'll just have to get used to it, Kailua District Park has be great to us, they given us plenty of room, just now we have few chess & go players coming out to play. Could be the summer vacation, could be we have less chess players, now, or it could be Windward Mall chess players only want to play in the mall. Whatever the reasons we hope to see a good showing at our meetings from now on.

Rep Cynthia Thielen has been fighting for us to get into Windward Mall, but so far its been a waiting game to see when the new Border's & Starbucks would open. So now that we are meeting in Kaneohe I hope to see some of die-hard chess & go players show some support for YOUR club. Last week there was only two us in this huge meeting room at Kailua District Park, unbelievable.

So starting this week (August 1st) we will be meeting at Starbucks Coffee, in Kaneohe at 43-23 Kamehameha Hwy, right across from Zippy's. This the same place the Oahu Go Club meets on Mondays and we have had a good showing from our Go players.

Also please join our Meetup group for Windward Chess & Go Club, that way you can be kept abreast of where WCGC is meeting weekly, should we move again.

Mahalo for supporting your local Windward Chess & Go Club. see links below for more information and maps of location of next meetings for both Windward Chess & Go Club and Oahu Go Club. And should be interested in boat safety and joining the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary a group of volunteer's there a link there for that as well. I happen to be the web master as well for all these groups as well.

August 4th we are having our first "Warm-up Scholastic Chess Tournament" at Kailua District Park next Saturday from 1:00pm to 5:00pm, see http://www.windwardchess.org/ for flier an more details.

Also we hope to see you this Wednesday August 1st, at Starbucks Coffee in Kaneohe same side a Longs Drug Store and next to Jamba Juice.

Cornelius Rubsamen & Chet Gionson Rapids Co-Champions

July 4th saw lots of fireworks including chess battles at Mililani Town Center, 29 chess warriors met and two came out on top. Cornelius Rubsamen and Chet Gionson with 6.0 points out of 7 no losses! This was the biggest chess tournament so far this summer so there is lots more chess action coming with the Hawaii State Championships and another Mililani Chess Day coming up next month. See http://www.hawaiichess.org/ for more information on results as well upcoming tournaments.

The first scholastic chess tournament is scheduled for Sept 29th, at Le Jardin Academy so I hope your all practicing at your local nearby chess clubs!

By the way all Hawaii chess tournaments are also rated by CXR http://www.cxrchess.com/ so if your memberships has expired please visit http://www.cxrchess.com/ to renew your membership via paypal so that we continue updating your game history and CXR rating as well. If your not current CXR member email at frank713@windwardchess.org and we'll get you started. CXR membership is $12 for adults and scholastic under 19 years - is only $5 annually. Checkout out the stats you can see at CXR web site.

To see CXR new ratings for current CXR members see http://www.cxrchess.com/WC239.html, if your name is not listed that is because your membership expired or you have not joined CXR. Note only do you see your new rating, you also have peak, seasonal, white and black rating as well graphs to review your history of games rated by CXR both USCF and scholastic tournaments. Check it out! Wonder if USCF will ever give us this type of information on our progress via chess tournaments we play in?

See you soon over a chess game or maybe a game of go. See http://www.oahugoclub.org/ for more on this!

Mahalo!