P.S. 503 Sunset Knights: 2013

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Brooklyn Keeps on Taking it! First, First, and First @ PS 503!

The Sunset Knights won First Place in Rookie, Novice, and Reserve at this weekend's tournament at PS 503. Congratulations to Devyn Jimenez and Edwin Mendez on their perfect 4.0 score in Rookie.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Showdown in Chinatown! The Knights win First Place!

The Sunset Knights won First Place Rookie Section at PS 124 this weekend. Congratulations to Rookie players Nelson Tung and Connie Gao who led their teams to victory with a 4-0 scores. Our Novice team tied for Second with PS 282. Zheng Zou finished (again!) with a perfect 4-0 score.

Here are two games from Jonathan Mendez who recently moved up to the Reserve section.

WHITE TO MOVE

BLACK TO MOVE

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Kings of Queens: Total Domination!

This weekend, the Sunset Knights won First Place in EVERY section we played: Rookie, Novice, and Reserve! If that weren't enough, as individuals our players won First Place in all these sections. Edwin Mendez (4.0) won First Place Rookie, Zheng Zou (4.0) won First Place Novice, and Steven Xue (4.0) won First Place Reserve (actually a three-way tie for First). Also, Giovanni Cortez won 3rd place Rookie with a perfect 4.0 score. Our game of the week is from Zheng's 3rd round game against a player from 150Q. Playing black, Zheng finds 18...Bxf3! luring white's rook from defending the back rank. Zheng told us after the game that he expected 20. Re3 Rxe3 21. fxe3 Ne4 winning an outpost for his knight, but instead his opponent played 20. Bxg5? that forced him to give up his queen to stop a mate.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Second Place in Harlem, First in our Hearts!

The Sunset Knights won Second Place in the Rookie and Reserve sections at the Chess-in-the-Schools tournament in Harlem. Here's a highlight from round 3, Jeremy's win against a 7th grader from the Manhattan Center For Science and Mathematics. Jeremy (playing White) takes advantage of his opponent's unsafe king to launch a creative king-side attack by kicking black's f6 knight with his g-pawn. After Jeremy's queen check on h5, Black is forced to lose material and get mated.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Another Smack-down in Chinatown! Sunset Knights First Again!

Our team won First Place Novice and Second Place Rookie at this weekend's tournament at P.S. 124 in Chinatown. Congrats to Jerry Leon (4.0) who won First Place as an Individual in the NRB section and Winnie Wu (4.0) who won Third Place in the Novice Section on tie-breaks. Checkout Winnie 3rd round game. Playing with the white pieces, she checkmates her opponent in 21 moves...with a pawn!

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Find the Best Move! Jomin vs. Matthew @ 150q

White attacks Black's Queen with Bc4. What's Black's (Jomin's) best move? White just played d5 and Jomin played Ne7 after. Find a better move!

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Winnie Wins in Queens!

Congratulations to Winnie Wu who won first place at today's tournament at 150q. Winnie's perfect score also secured the first place team prize in the Novice section.

Also, our NRB team won first place team led by Jair Priego's 4.0 score.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Yun Hang wins First Place in Harlem!

The Sunset Knights won Second Place in two sections (Rookie and Novice) at this weekend's tournament at FDA! Congratulations to Yun Hang Chen for winning 1st Place in Novice with a perfect 4.0 score. Winnie Wu won 3rd place in Novice with a score of 3.5. Also, Steven Xue's perfect 4.0 score won him 5th place in Reserve section on tie-breaks.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Samuel Dong vs. Edwin Lucero (318k)

Puzzles from Winnie's Games at 390x

Here's Winnie's complete game.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

First Place at 390x in the Bronx!

PS 503 won 1st Place Rookie and 2nd Place Novice at 390x in the Bronx.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

ChessMate Edwin Lucero Featured in The Brooklyn Eagle!

PS 503 chess team goes into summer as champions | Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Sunday, May 19, 2013

P.S. 503 wins First Place at the City Council Cup!

The ChessMates won the City Council Cup this Saturday at PS 503. Our top six players finished with perfect 4-0 scores! Sadly, this is the last tournament our graduating fifth graders will play as part of our team. Happily, quite a few will go on to play for the IS 318 chess team in the fall! We look forward to seeing them grow and mature as successful middle school students.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

P.S. 503 win the Mayor's Cup/BEST IN THE CITY Chess Championships

PS 503 chess team goes into summer as champions | Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Sunday, April 21, 2013

A Few Games from Saturday

Here is one of Steven Xue's games from Saturday. After Steven blunders horribly with 6. Nc3, he seemed to have been possessed by the spirit of a Neanderthal and proceeds to crush black in "caveman style."

Edwin Lucero is white in this game against a player from P.S. 160. Edwin joined our team relatively late last year and has improved so much. We were really impressed with the seriousness he brought to his games at Nationals, all lasting between three and four hours. There's a nice rook lift in this game that starts a King-side attack. Edwin skewers the King to the Queen but misses an easy mate-in-two.

Two recent tournaments! First, Second, and Third!

Last Wednesday the more budding members of our team got a chance to compete at the Cullman Rookie Tournament at Sony Wonderland. The team won first place, I'm proud to say, by executing quite a few legitimate checkmates! Also, our more experienced players won Second Place in the Open Section and Third Place in the Novice Section at the CIS Team Tournament this Saturday. Thank you to Shaun Smith, all the coaches, and TD's at Chess-in-the-Schools that made all these great tournaments happen this year!