On January 24th thirty teams in three sections competed in the Holiday Team Challenge tournament at the Hilton hotel in Woburn. Unlike the Hurvitz Cup scholastic team championship, teams in the Holiday Team Challenge can include players from different schools, subject to rating restrictions. This is a good opportunity for a group of friends to play together on a team even if they don't all go to the same school.

The Loch Chess Monsters (Michelle Chen, Max Wiegand, Henry Friedlander, and Jordan Shapiro) won the K-12 section with a perfect 4-0 score. BB&N Middle School (Nicholas Trieu, Bunnard and Darrith Phan, and Zachary Lovett) and the ACLS Tigers (Edward Li, Changming Xu, Andy Li, and Mason Liu) tied for second place with 3-1.

In the K-6 section, Sage School Team A (Nicholas Plotkin, Kevin Hu, Daniel Plotkin, and Brian Reidy) swept into first with 4-0. Andover (Alexander and Isabella Shih, James Zhou, and Peter Heckendorn) was clear second with 3-1. Three teams tied for third with 2 1/2-1 1/2: the ACLS Tigers (Jenny Qiu, Eric Liu, Brandon Wu, and Anthony Gao), Sage School Team B (Alex Gottlieb, Max and Iain Sheerin, August Donovan, and Eric Hu), and Wildcats Team 3 (Ellis O'Donnell, Daniel In, Nathan Lu, and Daniel Benson).

The Smiling Buddhas (Rohan Krishnan, Christopher Wang, Rahul Krishnan, Justin Lin, and Eric Feng) won the K-3 section with a score of 3 1/2-1/2. There was a two-way tie for second between the Russian Knights (Anton Barash, Alan Sikarov, Alon Trogan, Gene Kuperman, and Ben Bugalter) and the Cabot School (Evan Meyer, Jonathan Cohen, Jacob Brockman, and Jason Wolf.)

Alex Relyea was the chief tournament director, assisted by Nita Patel, Ken Ballou, Maryanne Reilly, Beebe Wiegand, Steve Frymer, and Bob Messenger.