June 21-25th, 2011

The 2011 Western Alliance Summer Chess Camp traditionally takes place on the last week of June, traditionally at the spacious grounds of the Green Fields Country Day school.

This all-day camp (9AM-7PM) is a great mix of chess lectures on broad spectrum of subjects and real life chess practice and training. The coaches also were carefully hand-picked, to cover the broad range of teaching styles, tournament play and first-hand knowledge of the modern scholastic tournament play.

We also tried to make sure that each day many classes had more than 1 instructor per group. Two and sometimes three instructors are able to make the lesson more engaging and fun by alternating or working with individual students.

The curriculum was also designed to make it equally fun and challenging for 5 year old beginner as well as for a 70 year old Class D player.  I am very proud once again we were up to the task and youngsters were paying as much attention and learning as much as possible.

We had 45 participants in the Main Camp and between 20 and 26 participants in each of the Daily Evening Events. The USCF Rated tournament was the icing on the cake, attracting more that 44 players and making the Open section extremely competitive with the appearance of titled players such as Ken Larsen, Gordon Ruan and others.

All participants earned special certificates and numerous prizes both of camp participation and for every Evening event they participated at.

I would like to thank all the participants, their parents, the coaches and all the out-of-state guests, Martha Underwood (camp coordinator and helper) and Gabriel Romo (DAR Services- scholarship donation) for making this even such a success, now 6th times in a row.

2011 Coaches / Helpers: IM Levon Altounian, Martha Underwood, FM Ken Larsen, Masters: Josh Leonard, Gordon Ruan, Experts Ed Yetman, Matt Noble, Sameer Manchanda, Dan Katzel, John Wright, George Ruan and others.

Simul: 26 participants- No one won or drew (against IM Levon Altounian)

Blitz Winners:

1st Place- Gordon Ruan

Under 1000 USCF

1st place Ariel Villasenor / 2nd place (tiebreaks)- Eli Cindrich / 3rd place (tiebreaks)- Max Coy

Special prize: Lauren Graham

Open

1st place (Instructors didn’t count for prizes)- Zak Cancio / 2nd place (tiebreaks) Sreekar Bommireddy /

3rd place (tiebreaks) Peter Bian

Special Prize: Joseph Kennedy

Bughouse:

1st place overall: Josh Leonard/Ryan Hornby team (Instructor teams are not eligible)

1st place: Peter Bian/Henry Wang / 2nd place: Sreekar Bommireddy / Milo Ratner / 3rd place: Sam Watson / Ariel Villasenor

Under 2000

1st place: Algol Jorajuria / Oscar Villasenor

 

USCF Green Fields Open Tournament result: http://main.uschess.org/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,181/

 

Thank You,

ArizonaChessForSchools.com