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.

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

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!

4th Place K-9 under 750!!!!!!!

8th Place K-9 under 1250!!!!!!!!