Canadian kid wins Las Vegas tournament section

[Kerry Liles]

See Spraggett's blog for full story; apparently this 'news' wasn't important or relevant enough for the CFC news feed?

BC youngster JAY SAWANT won the 14&Under (Reserve) section of the Las Vegas International Chess Festival (with a perfect score 5-0)
and he won a puzzle competition held at the same tournament...

http://kevinspraggettonchess.wordpre...an-chess-star/

I know K.S. has an axe to grind about the CFC etc, but this sort of thing underscores the problems of the CFC.

tournament crosstable:
http://www.vegaschessfestival.com/re...4nUnderReserve

[Bob Gillanders]

Thanks Kerry for telling us about this story.
Unfortunately, there is some behind the scenes politics going on.

Nevertheless,

Congratulations to BC's Jay Sawant for his big win in Las Vegas.
I hope it encourages him to keep playing.

[Kerry Liles]

I have no idea whether K.S.'s account is complete or even accurate - I only look at the diagrams on his site...
It seems strange that a nice achievement would not hit the CFC "news", but then again, there is always some politics going on, isn't there?

[Hugh Brodie]

As I reported on Chesstalk:

Just to clarify things - at the National Open, there were two U14 events - an Open and a U1000 event. Jay Sawant (and Eric Shan of California) were co-winners of the U1000 event. There were 57 players in the Open - some rated as high as 1919; 71 players in the U1000.

http://www.uschess.org/content/view/10014/624/

(click on "Results" next to "National Open".)

...and there are 63 U14's with a CFC rating over 1000. :-)

[Halldor P. Palsson]

I like Spraggett's blog even more now. His coverage of the Canadian chess scene is just so complete.

Some scofflaw at the CFC website thought that Jay Sawant winning U14/U1000 section in Las Vegas was unworthy of coverage. Was that because the U14 list is populated by some masters? This same scofflaw does not understand the importance of getting kids at all levels of skill to participate in organized chess tournaments for the health of the game.

Come on. It should still matter how the U1000 set is doing when they travel to big time tournaments in a foreign country. If it is good enough to be covered by GM Spraggett's blog is there any argument to be made for not giving it importance?

This endless focus on excellence and the top U14 is just unhealthy.

1 Preotu, Razvan 14 ON 2361
2 Song, Michael 14 ON 2352
3 Awatramani, Janak 14 BC 2240
4 Cao, Jason 13 BC 2223
5 Chiku-Ratte, Olivier Kenta 14 QC 2196
6 Doknjas, John 14 BC 2094
7 Kong, Dezheng 14 BC 2090
8 Zhou, Qiyu 13 ON 2088
9 Li, Yinshi 14 ON 2086
10 Zhong, Joey 13 ON 2023

[Félix Dumont]

This same scofflaw does not understand the importance of getting kids at all levels of skill to participate in organized chess tournaments for the health of the game.

The Newsfeed is not a blog. We want more detailled articles. Have you ever seen a Chessbase article without pictures, games or any details, just a link to a reserve section?

[Christopher Mallon]

Unfortunately I can't seem to tell if Halldor's post was sarcastic or not. It could go either way... maybe he will enlighten us

[Fred McKim]

Unfortunately I can't seem to tell if Halldor's post was sarcastic or not. It could go either way... maybe he will enlighten us

I'll vote for sarcastic, but it might be very difficult for a "non-insider" to pick that out.

[John Coleman]

I vote for sarcastic, too. The key for me is the word "scofflaw". i suppose there are some who might regard Spraggett's coverage of the Canadian chess secene as "complete".

Personally, I just go to his site for the jpgs ... oops, I mean diagrams.