ICA Summer Camp 2010 Day Camp Week 3

With only one rainy day this week the old man surely wasn’t snoring (because things just weren’t boring, etc. etc.).  Of special note, was this week’s addition of WGM, and one time conqueror of current women’s world champion Alexandra Kosteniuk, Tatiana Grabuzova to the coaching staff.  Tanya who was smart enough to accomplish said task above, and smart enough to run the problem solving competition this week (which was surprisingly most successful) wasn’t smart enough to avoid Lev Krasnovsky and his “shockingly-electric” pen of pain.  In Tanya’s defense, every coach fell victim to this the most hurtful of writing utensils.

Anyway, the tournament winner’s were Sergey Kudrin’s pride and joy, Bertina Kudrin in section six, Connor Jordan in section five, Anthony Clemente in section four, and Phillip Blumin in section three.  Section three came down to a one game playoff on the final day, and once again involved Lev Krasnovsky (see last week’s result where Lev and Sid fought it out for first), with Phillip coming out on top after Lev missed an en passant capture, and further still a fork tactic that cost him a rook.

However, as compensation Lev was again awarded the prize for best notation, with all of his games, written, and recorded to near perfection.  Joining Lev in best notation honors was Sabrina Jeon, who also notated all her games neatly and without error, and gained the prize because she was less experienced than Lev in this respect and yet had similarly well notated games.

Jacob Tepler won Tanya’s problem solving competition, while Phillip Blumin won the “survival in a simul” award by taking Eve fifty moves plus and forcing her to stay an extra hour to finally find the winning combination.  Solomon and Danny were both taken forty one moves and humorously checkmated with the same “Bb6” in completely different positions.  Max made a slight mistake in promoting and was taken forty-five moves during his simul.

During the rainy day we held a blitz competition divided among three separate sections.  Dillon Shelton won the youngest section, Bertina Kudrin won the intermediate section, and Jacob “the king taker” Tepler won in the senior citizens group. 

The best students in the study groups were: Reid Slott in Danny’s group, Christopher Elson in Eve’s group, Eric Trostin in Slava’s group, Morty Schlussel in Max’s group, Ellen Kamalyan in Solomon’s group, and Lev Krasnovsky in Tanya’s group.

Winners in the sports groups were: Akiva Gold in the oldest group (b: 98 and older), Morty Schlussel in the second oldest (b: 1999), Phillip Blumin in the third (b: 2000), Reid Slott in the fourth (b:2001), Daniel Khaitov in the fifth group (b:2002), and Josh Lerman in the youngest (b:2003).

Prizes for sports went to Anthony Clemente in dodgeball, and Tomas Leonardo in soccer, while Daniel Khaitov’s awesome picture of a tiger won the art competition. 

As usual Friday was team day, with the relay races being won by the “Flip Flop Lightning Snakes” led by coach Danny Rade.   Danny’s team was made up of Phillip Blumin, Dillon Shelton, Bertina Kudrin, Anthony Clemente, Daniel Khaitov, and Connor Jordan.  The chess competition, comprising both blitz and bughouse, was once again won by a Lev Krasnovsky led team, this time called “Three Bishops and a Rook.”  The team was made up of Lev Krasnovsky, Josh Lerman, Connor Jordan, and Zachary Mankowitz.      

See you all next week.

Sergey’s Master Camp

For week three, Sergey added Hana to help handle the ten students who attended the intermediate camp in Fair Lawn.  In section one, which voted not to rate the classical tournament, Robert Elliot won without much resistance and without defeat, while Ethan Klein, in a rated section two tournament, won without a loss as well (Lukas, playing in section two, opted out of having his results count towards his rating). 

Robert also dominated the single intermediate camp blitz competition. 

In the problem solving competition, though it was close to an un-informed observer, who may have thought Ari Shusterman, or Nicholas Katz stood a chance, to those in the know (like me) it was obvious David Shektman would be the winner here.

In the sports competitions, Arjun Mayur was the overall winner.