Last spring, the MIT Chess Club revived after a period of relative inactivity. It quickly expanded to over 50 members, and continues growing steadily!

The MIT Winter Open, held at the MIT Media Lab on December 11th, marked our third USCF-event, and our last of 2016. The turnout of 40 players was solid, but more importantly two were new players! This marks a half-dozen players who have become (or renewed) members thanks to our tournaments, which is of course the best kind of reward.

In the Open section, top seed Christopher Chase suffered an early upset, losing a very interesting rook ending in which his 7th-rank pawn couldn't compensate for a pawn deficit. This opened the door for a number of nearmasters to fight for the top spots, and Nithin Kavi -- who had actually made master a week before -- ended up winning the tournament with a perfect 4-0 score. Sherif Khater took clear second with 3.5 points (missing the first round), and third place was split between Richard Yi (whose only loss was in the final round, to Kavi) and Alan Song. 

In the U1800 section, Linh Nyugen won with a perfect 4-0 score, made more impressive by the fact that he played three blacks in the tournament (!). John Martin, who lost only his final round encounter with Nyugen, and Jeremy Rosenholtz, whose loss came from Martin after the latter found the correct breakthrough in a pawn ending, split 2nd and 3rd with 3 points apiece.

Finally, in the U1400 section Isaac Chen, Hoyin Chu, and Jason Wyckoff split the top three places with three points apiece. Of special note is Sophia Rosenholtz (pictured, playing white against Chu), who played each of the top three finishers in the first three rounds (winning one)! The Wyckoff - Rosenholtz game was particularly exciting, in which Wyckoff offered his queen to set up a deadly mating net. 

Our next tournaments will be in the spring, so stay tuned! Additionally, our club meetings (Wednesdays, 7-9 pm) are open to the public, so feel free to stop by and check us out at chess.mit.edu!