85 players competed in this year’s Gus Gosselin Grade Championship, held March 11th 2012 in Woburn. This tournament, named after Gus Gosselin, a former MACA president and hard-working chess promoter who died in 2007, evolved out of what was originally a consolation tournament held at the same time as the Massachusetts invitational scholastic championship, now known as the Spiegel Cup. Attendance has declined in recent years – the tournament drew 102 players in 2011 and 136 in 2009 – possibly because it hasn’t been as well publicized, although part of the drop has been because the event no longer has a High School section due to low attendance. The tournament has one section for each grade between fi rst and eighth, with kindergarteners playing in a combined K-1 section.
Winners this year were: Grade 8: Siddharth Arun of Medfi eld (3½-½); Grade 7: David Maimon of Weston (3½-½); Grade 6: Leonardo Cheng of Westford (4-0); Grade 5: Evan Meyer of Newton on tiebreak over Alex Fauman, also of Newton (3½-½); Grade 4: Nithin Kavi of Acton (4-0); Grade 3: Adrian Seeger of Newton (4-0); Grade 2: Maxwell Zhao (Bolton); Grades K-1 : Eddie Wei of Winchester (4-0), who was also the top-scoring player in kindergarten. Since Eddie couldn’t win two trophies the Top Kindergarten trophy went to Sanjana Kadiyala of Acton, who scored 1½ points. Leonardo Cheng’s performance in Grade 6 was especially impressive because he was only the 4th highest rated player in the section. He pulled off a 548-point upset against top seed Tal Puhov of Shrewsbury in the last round and gained 195 rating points in the tournament. Brian Mottershead was the chief tournament director, assisted by George Mirijanian, Steve Frymer and Bob Messenger.
George Mirijanian contributed material which was used in the preparation of this article.
|