April 17, 2007
New York
Brooklyn: High School Chess Team Wins Championship
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
The chess team from Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn won its fourth consecutive national championship on Sunday, tying with a high school from Arizona. It was the second time in three years that Murrow and Catalina Foothills High School of Tucson were named co-winners of the National High School Championship. Each school earned 22 points in the tournament, which was held in Kansas City, Mo.
Source: NY Times
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
what insane east coast basis. They clearly lost on tiebreaks.
Looks like we have a little rivalry starting up here.
You mean East Coast Bias.
bias. a particular tendency or inclination, esp. one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice.
I really dont like tie breaks. I prefer playoff games. But if tiebreaks were announced before the tournament began then they should be used and not ignored.
It looks like you are correct. The New York Times is biased toward a New York school. But that seems almost fair. Most all towns would highlight and give the home team the advantage in the news. Here is a more unbiased list of the outcome of the entire tournament.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=24668
here is a short quote.
K12 Championship: Alex Lenderman (NY) won the tie-break against Alexander Barnett (MD) and Michael Zhong after a tied score of 6.5 points.
K12 Team Championship: Catalina Foothills H.S. from Tucson, AZ won the trophy after a tie-break with the Edward R. Murrow H.S. from NY. Tied score was 22.0 points. Catalina has won two of the past three National High School Championships!
Looks like we should say congratulations to Alex Lenderman and to Catalina for their success. I would have preferred a playoff for the top 3 scoring 6.5/7 is pretty good. It seems a shame 2 good players lost on tiebreaks.
But it would be more correct to say that Catalina won the title and not Brooklyn.
I agree. I am surprised that the New York Times did not do even cursory fact checking which would have shown that the team from Arizona Foothills won on tie breaks. The Murrow team has had some very noteworthy successes and kudos to Lenderman for winning the tournament but it sounds like the Times bought the Murrow spin on their 2nd place finish on tie breaks.
I don’t think the Times is necessarily biased but I do think that they didn’t do their homework. The Murrow coach is renowned for sending out press releases announcing his team’s victories at various tournaments. (One such release led to the writing and publication of the excellent book Kings of New York). But in this case, I suspect that the Times reporter got the release and didn’t bother to go onto the USCF website where he could easily have ascertained that Murrow lost to Catalina Foothills on tiebreaks.
MyChessPhotos.com (official photographer) awarded a $250.00 scholarship to Caleb Molitoris of California for the biggest upset prize. Caleb rated 1073 beat his opponent rated 2016!
Now even the kids have to watch out for the other kids. haha.
National Scholastic tournaments are minefields for the top scholastic players. To win or do well, you have to make it through 4 or 5 players rated several hundred points below you. They have no pressure on them. It’s also diffcult for the top players because by the time they get up to 1800/2000 range, they mostly plan in adult tournaments or against scholastic players in their rating range. They are not used to the weird moves of players rated 600 or 800 and it can throw them off. At the end, if they get 6 or 7 points, they are lucky to get 5 rating points.
Having been in Kansas City myself, I can attest to the extreme range of emotions at this tournament. This was the largest (1447 players) and strongest (12 masters and 46 players rated over 2000) National High School Championship ever. Upsets were the norm–my own team suffered a over a half dozen losses to opponents rated 300+ lower.
I hope that the stories in Chess Life on the National High School Championship detail the excrutiating details of the last day. The story line is the stuff movies are made out of. The team competition was the closest.
In short, Catalina Foothills (AZ) was leading Murrow (NY) by 2 points after round 5. However, all of the top Arizona players lost in round 6, allowing Murrow to take a 1 point lead into round 7. Since Murrow had three down pairings in the final round, the Catalina Foothills team knew that nothing short of a 4-0 sweep would be sufficient.
The story gets even more dramatic. In the final two games, a Murrow player misplayed a winning position and lost while on another board, a Catalina Foothills player missed a forced checkmate but still somehow won. The Catalina Foothills coach was overcome with emotion and was crying–first from sadness and then from joy. In the end, Murrow scored 3-1 while Catalina Foothills got the 4-0 that they needed. The computer favored the Arizona team on the second tiebreak!
By the way, Catalina Foothills High School (coached by FM Robby Adamson) and Edward R. Murrow High School (coached by Eliot Weiss) have won the last four National High School Championships. In 2004 and 2006, Murrow took the first place trophy while in 2005 and 2007, Catalina Foothills earned top honors.
Michael Aigner
One correction: Catalina Foothills won on the first tiebreak, not the second tiebreak. I misread the website.
Here’s a list of the top four players for both schools:
Catalina Foothills High School: NM Landon Brownell (2230), Chris De Sa (2101), Vaishnav Aradhyula (2171) and Pavel Savine (1923).
Edward R. Murrow High School: IM Alex Lenderman (2471), IM Sal Bercys (2491), Shawn Martinez (2009) and Nile Smith (1792).
Wow, Michael. You are right that the last round has the makings of a feature film. Mad Hot Chessboard, indeed. (That was the title of the New York Times rave review of The Kings of New York, an obvious play on Mad Hot Ballroom.) I was practically in tears reading your comment! Our team was recently involved in nailbiter finishes at two tournaments (we lost the first by a point and won the second by 1/2 point) and they were both emotional rollercoasters for the kids, coaches and parents. When one of our kids walked into the team room, after having won a key game against the other team that was in contention, the room erupted in cheers and high fives, just as if he had scored the winning basket or goal. I don’t know if you read Steve Goldberg’s lengthy piece about The Kings of New York in his Chess Cafe column but he spoke to Robby Adamson who noted that “Nationals are always a matter of survival.” Good quote.
Murrow and Arizona tied for the 2007 National Championship HS Chess Tournament. Both had 22 points. Thats the only significant statistic. They were announced as co-champions at the USCF awards ceremony that night. In chess if there is a tie, the reigning champion keeps its title. Tiebreakers are not used to award money prizes and titles.
Point of Clarification on previous comment – The Reigning champion does not keep the title if there is a tie. Each year is considered on its own merits and you dont look to a previous year. Both were announced as co-champs, but the AZ team got 1st place (and trophy) on tiebreaks because they had better tiebreakers based on superior performance for the entire tournament.