Chess club moves on to state championships

Chess Club member junior Siddarth Manoj plays against his opponent during the first round of the chess tournament. The chess tournament was held Feb. 4 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Photo by Margaret Lin.

On Feb. 4 chess players from various schools in and around Santa Clara County gathered in the MVHS cafeteria for a tournament that began at 8 a.m. By the end of the day at 7 p.m, MVHS had brought home the victory for the first time in three years and had received the John Marks Perpetual Trophy, which has been handed out yearly to the winning chess team in the Santa Clara County since 1987.

The team trophy was awarded based on a system of points. If a match was won, the winner recieved one point. If the match ended in a draw, the players recieved half a point. Players received no points for a loss. The top three scorers were added up for each team and their scores were used to determine the winning team.

“This year we’ve had the strongest team we’ve ever had,” English teacher and Chess Club adviser,” Scott Catrette said. “We have a couple new freshmen that are stronger than [all] the previous players we’ve had in the last six years that I’ve been in charge.”In addition to the first place team win, the club also brought back individual trophy wins.

Neel Apte, an eighth grader from Kennedy Middle School who was playing for MVHS, brought home first place. In this tournament, teams were allowed to bring members in from sixth through eighth grade. In addition, sixth grader Cameron Wheeler received third place, sixth grader Udit Iyengar received fourth and sophomore Dennis Tan received fifth place.

“We have three middle schoolers representing MVHS right now and they’re crushing all the high schoolers right now, which is kind of funny,” chess team member sophomore Myron Loke said during the middle of the last round. “They all have four points right now so we’re pretty much [guaranteed] to win this tournament now which is a good thing, because we haven’t won in three years.”

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“This year we’ve had the strongest team we’ve ever had. We have a couple new freshmen that are stronger than [all] the previous players we’ve had in the last six years that I’ve been in charge.”

– Chess Club adviser Scott Catrette

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According to Catrette, last year the team could have won the tournament too, but SwissSys the software that helps to match up players and determine the winner, broke the tie and gave Saratoga High School the win. This tournament allowed both rated and unrated players to play. Since Saratoga’s player was rated nationally while the player from MVHS was not, the software automatically gave Saratoga an extra half point to break the tie.

“It was a really painful loss,” Catrette said. “We came in to that tournament mentally prepared, very practiced, ready to win and wanting to win. [But] that happens in chess. Chess is like a slippery fish; one minute you think you’ve gotten it and in the next moment it just gets away from you.”

Chess club president senior Harsha Nukala and vice president junior Christopher Wu were in charge of organizing the event with help from Catrette.

“We had to call Costco and have them ship some food for the [participants] of the tournament [but overall organizing the event] wasn’t that hard,” Wu said. “The main thing is just running the software [called SwissSys] and the software does everything for you.”

As for future plans, most of the players are preparing to attend the state championship tournament, which will take place in April.

“Unfortunately I can’t make it to state championship, because I have an FBLA state conference from the 23-26 of April [which conflicts with the chess] state championships,” Nukala said. “But I hope that many of our younger players [will] compete, because that’s what normally happens.”