Millburn Library Chess Tournament
Submitted by Scott Massey
As tradition has it, Friends of the Millburn Library held its annual student chess tournament on the second Saturday of December. It all started in 1980 when Michael Wojcio directed the first tournament, which he followed up 30 more times. This formula worked for the first 40 tournaments, but something happened on the way to the 41st.
Three months after the 40th tournament, held on December 14, 2019, the world shut down because of Covid-19. In-person chess classes and chess tournaments were abruptly suspended. In September 2021, amid a major renovation of the Millburn Free Public Library, Friends of the Saturday chess classes were able to resume in the library’s temporary location at the old Annie Sez building at 253 Millburn Avenue, but attendance was sporadic. An attempt was made to hold the 41st on February 5, 2022, but Covid caused another shutdown.
The stars aligned on December 10, 2022 enabling the 41st Annual Student Chess Tournament to take place after a 3 year absence. The doors opened at 9:30 and chaos ensued as last-minute entries rushed in. Friends of the Millburn Library led by Dorothy Kelly with Ruthie Binder and Xiaoming Xia greeted the 61 participating students.
In addition to participants from Millburn and Short Hills, players from Fairfield, Montville, Livingston, New Providence, and Springfield rounded out the field.
Section I (5-7 year-olds) had 19 children compete. In the end, it came down to two from the Wyoming School: first grader Lei Shan and second grader Amogh Banagere. They finished their main four game schedule undefeated at 3 1/2-1/2. They drew each other in round three and forced a playoff. The 6-year-old Lei won the playoff and Section I with Amogh taking second place. Himansh Rathod from Hartshorn School was on his way to win the tournament until he lost to Lei in round 4. He won the playoff to capture third place. First graders Owen Hu from Deerfield and Rishi Sambasivan from Hartshorn tied for fourth and fifth places with 3-1 scores. Sean Park from Collins was sixth.
Ayansh Ahluwalia repeated his 4-0 performance as he ripped through the 27 players in Section II (8-10 year-olds) to capture the largest trophy. Three years ago, the fifth grader from the Washington School won four straight games to win Section I. Fourth graders Colin Hu from Deerfield and Arin Telang from South Mountain School also went undefeated but drew each other in round three. Their playoff saw Colin win for second place and Arin taking third place. Tied for fourth through ninth places with 3-1 scores were Sam Wang from Wyoming, Jonathan Lu and Zayn Shikari from Deerfield, Varun Ravishanka from Hartshorn, Srithik Jha from Glenwood School and Ian Kundic from Washington. Gowri Raina from Deerfield was tenth with 2 1/2-1 1/2.
Section III (11-14) almost seemed like an internal tournament of Millburn Middle School (MMS) students as over two thirds of the 15 entries attend MMS. Aayan Mehta dominated the field not only with four straight wins, but handing three prize winners their only loss in rounds 2, 3, and 4. Three students tied for second to fourth places with 3-1 scores, so a playoff was needed. A second playoff was needed as the first ended in a tie. Zav Wolf from MMS finally won second place with Aiden Solotoff from Newark Academy third and Max Lin from MMS in fourth. Tied for fifth, sixth, and seventh places with 2 1/2-1 1/2 scores were Ches Chen from Mount Pleasant Middle School, Aryan Vats and Atharv Karamchell both from MMS.
The 41st was directed by master Scott Massey who also teaches the Saturday chess classes at the Millburn library. Keigo Fujita and Daniel Klymchuk assisted the tournament proceedings. Sapna Gupta designed the beautiful flyers.
Friends of the Millburn Library are responsible for another successful tournament, in more ways than one. These tournaments are a great first tournament for young children. They stir interest in chess and give experience. Friends also helps foster interest in chess by organizing the weekly drop-in Saturday chess classes at the library.
On November 20, the New Jersey State Grade Championships took place. That means 13 different tournaments from grade K through grade 12. Twelve Millburn/Short Hills public schools teams finished in the top 5 places for the 13 individual tournaments. Among these 12 were four first place teams, Deerfield Grade One, Hartshorn Grade Three, MMS Grade Seven and Millburn High School Grade Twelve. Individually, Colin Hu from Deerfield won all 5 games to become NJ State Grade Four Champion. Congratulations to all!
Yes, the Friends did it again.
