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.

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.

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!