Congratulations to Washington State junior chess player Joseph Levine, who recently achieved the third and final norm required for the FIDE International Master (IM) title, at a tournament in Budapest, Hungary! He achieved the first two required norms last year and earlier this year at events in Los Angeles. Here’s a summary of the three events, with links to results: Norm #1: Hollywood Norm Classic #3 Los Angeles, CA 2022/08/03 – 2022/08/07 https://chess-results.com/tnr658108.aspx?lan=1&art=9&fed=USA&turdet=YES&flag=30&snr=26 Norm #2: 1000GM LA GM Norm Invitational Los ..read more

This year’s National K-12 Grade Chess Championship was held Dec. 9th to 11th at National Harbor, MD. Over 2,400 K-12 grade students across the country played in this annual national tournament, significantly higher turnout than last year. Here is what it looks like to have so many players in one huge room before the start of the first round. There were 260 students in the 3rd grade section with many strong players. This was before the start of Ted’s first game (also see featured photo at the top of this post). Since local junior Ted Wang was the top rated player o ..read more

A fundraising event for Northwest Chess, a six-round tournament on chess.com, will be held May 9-10 in memory of Mike Neeley, former NWC editor. Prizes are subscriptions or subscription extensions. Come play and be part of NWC history; this is the first NWC Open played online, and the only time the event has been held twice in the same year (the first one kind of died from Covid fears, just before everything shut down). Details in the flyer. RD ..read more

On 16 May, the grand on-line chess experiment continues with a new event, the Northwest Regional Scholastic Championships! When shelter-in-place orders forced the delay or outright cancellation of chess events with packed playing halls full of potentially contagious people, the Washington Chess organizers quickly moved to well-planned on-line events. But somebody (naming no names) noticed that not all of the states in the NW region were able to make the shift, possibly leaving kids unable to participate in State Championships this school year. How about adding a new event? Instead of, or in ad ..read more

At the most recent Northwest Chess board meeting, we decided to do some things to add value for NWC subscribers. Free chess webinars? Check! Of course we’re talking about on-line events, since our ability to hold in-person meetings is severely constrained at the moment. Can you say… Zoom? Mondays in May we’ll have webinars from 5:00-6:00 PM, PDT. On 4 May, Chouchanik Airapetian will have a session aimed at kids (wear your PJs and bring your favorite plush friend!), subject “How to choose the right move in the middle game.” Josh Sinanan will host on 11 May, talking about how to play against hig ..read more

Looks like it’s been awhile since the NWC blog has been active, and even longer since I posted anything. Time to fix that! Two posts I’ll detail shortly: 1) Free Master lectures for Northwest Chess subscribers; 2) Northwest Chess Open, May 9-10, on Chess.com. -RD ..read more

National Chess Day was Saturday October 13, 2018. On that day a Simultaneous Exhibition by Grandmaster James Tarjan was held at the Vancouver Mall, 8700 NE Vancouver Mall Drive, Vancouver WA near Macy’s entrance to the mall by the large chess set on the lower level that gets a lot of play. Play took place over 14 boards and took about 3 hours. A mixture of adults and kids and one woman took part. This was a free event for players and spectators. The grandmaster won all his games. The organizer was Russell (Rusty) Miller e-mail: russellmiller22@comcast.net The sponsors were: Vancouver Mall, Nor ..read more

Congratulations to Jason Yu of Bellevue, Washington, who achieved a U.S. Chess rating of 2203 as a result of scoring 5 out of 9 points at the 2nd Annual Seattle Chess Classic, held at Seattle Chess Club August 15-19.  Along the way to the title, Jason scored a draw against GM Tarjan and wins against FM Ignacio Perez and LM Viktors Pupols.  Way to go Jason!!  Here is a link to the crosstable: http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?201808199902.2 Jason would like to thank all the coaches (WGM Elena Donaldson, IM Georgi Orlov, GM Emil Anka and GM Greg Serper) and people ..read more

  By Monica Olaru Sophie Velea and Anne-Marie Velea won gold medals at girls under 10 and girls under 14 in 2018 Pan-American Chess Championship in Santiago, Chile.Anne-Marie received also the title of Woman FIDE Master and Sophie received again the title of Woman Candidate Master. Both of them will represent USA as official representative at World Cadets in Spain and World Youth in Greece. Also they will represent USA at next 2019 Pan-American Chess Championship in Ecuador. 22 countries participated in this tournament.  Team USA got 1st place ..read more

Here are the final results of the Seattle Summer Team Matches between Teams Carlsen vs Caruana and Spassky vs Fischer.  Pictures from the match can be found on the WCF FB page. Seattle Summer Team Matches: Team Carlsen (A) vs Team Caruana (B) (5 v 5) Team Spassky (A) vs Team Fischer (B) (5 v 5) Teams: Team Carlsen – 17.0 Eric Zhang 2050 4.5 $50 FIDE Master Anthony He 2337 4.0 $8.33 Jason Yu 2156 4.0 $8.33 Joseph Levine 1982 4.0 $8.33 Vignesh Anand 1964 0.5 Avg. rating: 2098 Team Caruana – 8.0 Aaryan Deshpande 2027 2.5 $50 FIDE Master Ignacio Perez 2227 1.5 $8 ..read more