2008 brought the State Scholastic back to the Saratoga Hotel for the second straight year, the first time a site has repeated since the Syracuse days of the 1980’s. A total of 384 players, an increase of four from 2007, contested the tournament. Continental Chess Association led by chief Tournament Director Steve Immitt did its usual excellent job in organizing the most difficult tournament in the State to organize every year.

As an extra incentive to players, the winner of each section also receive a free entry to the 2008 New York State Championship in Albany on Labor Day weekend.

Saratoga 2008 may be remembered as the only State Scholastic ever where all six sections had a clear winner.

The High School section had 68 players, with the winner of the six-round tournament earning a berth in the annual Denker Tournament of High School Championship, which is held concurrently with the U.S. Open in August in Dallas. The top girl player wins a berth in the concurrent Polgar Tournament of Girl High School Champions, unless of course a girl wins the main tournament.

For the second consecutive year, the State Scholastic Champion is an Upstater. National Master Matt Parry became the second straight Rochester-area player to claim the crown with the section’s only 6-0 score. Parry defeated the 2007 Champion, James Hiltunen, in the final round to clinch the perfect record. Vermont’s Haizhou Xu was clear second with 5 ½ points, having a “Swiss Gambit” in the second round drawing Coxsackie’s Justin Warren, then sweeping the final four games to jump over a bunched field.

Parry will represent New York in the Denker Championship, and is quite excited to be representing the Empire State in Texas.

On the Polgar side, there was a logjam of players at 4-2.

Linda Diaz beat Angelica Barrios on tiebreaks in order to be the Polgar representative for this year.

Two New York City players tied for third: Michael Peguero of I318K, and Mikhail Furman of the Team Champion Edward Murrow school. 2007 High School Champion James Hiltunen of Brighton and Stephen Dygert of Fairport tied for fifth with 4 ½ points.

A large group of high school players bunched together at four points, with many in the group losing only to the leaders. In tiebreak order, seventh place went to Schenectady’s Deepak Aaron, followed by Edward Murrow’s Shawn Martinez, Zachary Rivkin of Horace Mann, Evan Rabin, Polgar representative Linda Diaz, IS 318’s Ricardo Fabian, Matthew Brown of Newburgh Free Academy, Angelica Berrios of IS 318, Khadeejah Gray of Hunter High School, Jack Hutton from the Bronx, Valicio Palha and Zachary Dikstein of Edward Murrow, Treva Ayton, Andrew Di Fabbio of New Rochelle and Alan Pizarro of Edward Murrow. Hutton was undefeated with two wins and four draws.

Edward Murrow of Brooklyn won the Top Team Trophy with 17 points (Mikhail Furman 5, Shawn Martinez, Valicio Palha, Zachary Dikstein, Alan Pizarro all had 4). Intermediate School 318 of Brooklyn was clear second with 16 points (Michael Peguero 5, Angelica Berrios 4, Ricardo Fabian 4, Jonathan Cruz 3). New Rochelle Senior High School was third with 13 ½ points (Andrew DiFabbio 4, Franco Izazaga 3 ½, Alvin Dean, Jonathan Crooks, Marcanthoy Demassi, Mark Arias all with 3).

The Junior High Championship had 66 players from throughout the state. Ben Gershenov, the tournament’s highest-rated player (but only by 14 points) swept the field 6-0 to create a rare full-point clear Champion in the section. Gershenov not only swept the field in an impressive performance for the player from Solomon Schecther School in Hartsdale, he beat the second, third and fourth place finishers in successive rounds on Sunday.

Darrian Robinson was second with five points, heading a four-person team from Intermediate School 318 that all scored five points and swept the Top Team Trophy. Teammates Rochelle Ballantyne, Steven Cardena and Daniel Maciag finished fourth, fifth and sixth in tiebreak order. Ontario‘s Mate Marinkovic was the only other finisher with five points.

There was a substantial group of players with four points, starting with seventh place finisher Max Steinberg of Solomon Schecther, followed by Daniel Gallagher of Fabius-Pompey (an underrated 1009 entering the tournament), Terrell Roberts, Markel Brown of IS 318, Giovanni Quattrochi, Malik Perry, Harry Heublum, Amani Eley of IS 318, Andrew Zigmont of New Rochelle’s Isaac Young Middle School, Alexander Reis of Solomon Schecther, Inna Maryasina of IS 228, Jasmine Fermin of IS 318, Leonardo Pena of IS 223, Ezequiel Quinones of IS 318, and David Karp.

As mentioned previously, IS318 won the Top Team Trophy with the four players all tied for second. Solomon Schecther School was clear second with 17 points (Ben Gershenov 6, Max Steinberg and Alexander Reis 4, Jared Goldfarb 3), and New York City’s Intermediate School 223 was third with 13 points (Leonardo Pena 4, Enriue Paulino, Zhiming Tu, Amit Saha, Tong Wan, Dalvir Bhatti, Remin Friedlander all with 3).

A total of 84 players contested the Elementary Championship, which is traditionally the largest section at the State Scholastics every year. Like the Junior High and High School sections, it had a clear winner, with Alex Yung, a sixth-grader from New York City’s Upper Lab School winning the tournament outright with 5 ½ points. Yung drew sixth-place finisher Nigel Bryant of Valley Stream’s Howel Road School in the fifth round. Four players tied for second with five points: Ontario’s Christopher Knox (who was the section’s highest-rated player at an impressive 2075 for a fifth-grader), Timothy Hoang of the Horace Mann School, Kevin Rosenberg, and Alexander Spinnell of New York City’s PS 290. Spinnell also went undefeated, giving up draws in the fourth and fifth rounds.

The aforementioned Nigel Bryant led a group of seven players with 4 ½ points, which shows the close nature of the competition and is very unusual for an elementary-school championship. The Howel Road School student won his first four games before drawing and losing the final two rounds. Lenn Uchima of Horace Mann, Nigel’s brother Jehron, Alexis Paredes of IS 318, Dylan Kosinski of New York City’s Trevor Day School, Niskayuna’s Patrick Chi, and Nicholas Ng of the Dalton School had 4 ½ points, and are listed in tiebreak order.

The group tied for 13^th at 4-2, in tiebreak order, was Ben Kessler and Aaron Schein of Horace Mann, Kyle Moon of PS 116, Lilia Poteat of Columbia Grammar, Michael Bogaty, Jasmine Chen, Raphael Nunez-Painchaud, Matthew Zeitlin of Horace Mann, Jack Heublum of Columbia Grammar, Pobo Efekoro of IS 318 and Joshua Jaffe of Jamesville-DeWitt.

Horace Mann School of the Bronx won the Top Team Trophy with 17 ½ points (Timothy Hoang 5, Leon Uchima 4 ½, Ben Kessler, Aaron Schein and Matthew Zeitlin all with 4), sweeping the field by three points. Intermediate School 318 of Brooklyn was clear second with 14 ½ points (Alexis Paredes 4 ½, Pobo Efekoro 4, Rawn Prowell, Miguel Garcia and Myles Foster all 3). Manhattan’s Columbia Grammar School was third with 14 points (Lilia Poteat and Jack Heublum 4, Maude Rodsmoen and Elias Giangrande 3).

Gardner Howe, a 796-rated player from Manhattan’s Buckley School, swept the Elementary Novice with a perfect 6-0 score. Teammate Jack Goodwin was clear second in the 66-player section with 5 ½ points, yielding only a third-round draw to Derek Yu of Primary School 124 in New York. Four players tied for third with five points: Aidan O‘Brien of New York’s Mott Hill School, Kelton Brown, Nicolas Welch of the Buckley School and Jonathan Richman of Saugerties’ St. Mary of the Snow. Derek Yu, who faced four of the top five players, was clear seventh with 4 ½ points.

Eighth-place winner Alisa Kikuchi of PS 116 led the large group with four points, followed by Michael Morigi, also of PS 116, Mott Hill’s Lucus Weber, Nicholas Lawless of St. Mary of the Snow, Alexander Booth of the Upper Lab School, Sarah Hopseker of Fabius Elementary, Remi Moon of PS 116, George Coumanatros of the Buckley School, Leon Lai of PS 130, Myles Wolf, Charlie Mather of the Buckley School, Jesse Miller of the Churchill School and Albert Chen of PS 184.

The Top Team Trophy was won by The Buckley School of New York City (Gardner Howe 6, Jack Goodwin 5 ½, Nicolas Welch 5, George Coumantaros and Charlie Mather both with 4) with 20 ½ points, besting the field by an impressive five points. Public School 116 of Manhattan was second with 15 ½ points (Alisa Kikuchi, Michael Morigi, and Remi Moon all with 4, Nicholas Pizzo and William McCann with 3 ½). PS 184, also of New York City, was third with 13 ½ points (Albert Chen 4, Daniel Como 3 ½, Joshua Chan and Victor Huang with 3).

The Primary (K-3) Championship drew 53 players, and was won by top-rated William Graif (1690), a New York second grader, with 5 ½ points. Graif gave a last-round draw to fifth-place finisher Kadhir Pillai to clinch first prize. Daniel Kostovetsky of New York and Hunter College Elementary School’s Matthew Zafra tied for second with 5 points, with Kostovetsky getting the second place trophy on tiebreaks. Zafra went undefeated.

Three players had 4 ½ points in this very competitive section: Max Everett of Hunter College, Kadhir Pillai of PS 116 and Quebec’s Kelly Wang. Wang won three straight on Sunday after starting the tournament 1 ½-1 ½ on Saturday.

Eric Dickstein won the seventh-place trophy to lead the group of players with four points, followed by Eric Zhang, Webster Kehoe of Genesee Valley, Daniel Pascetta of Connecticut, Vishan Ramanathan, Aravind Kumar, New Jersey’s Leo Vigna, and George Grimbilas of the Browning School.

Hunter College Elementary School won the Top Team Trophy with 16 points (Matthew Zafra 5, Max Everett 4, David Maluf 4, and Asher Liftin 3), besting the field by 3 ½ points. PS 116 of Manhattan was clear second with 12 ½ points (Kadhir Pillai 4 ½, Teodor Lipan 3, Alexander Crump and Akhilesh

Khakhar 2 ½) and the Browning School of New York was third with 12 points (George Grimbilas 4, George Allen and Takayuki Ishikawa 3, Rohan Singh 2).

Liza Vigna won the always-entertaining one-day K-1 section, which this year was held on Sunday as a five-round event. Vigna won the tournament with a perfect 5-0 score, sweeping the field by a full point and defeating two of the second-place finishers in the process. The logjam for second place included eight players in the 47-player section.

In tiebreak order, second place was won by Jesse Weinstein of Hunter College, the section’s highest-rated player at 1008. Following him in tiebreak order were Ryan Hoang of New Jersey, Alexander Bavalsky of Public School 215, Samuel Everett of Hunter College, Ari Rosen of Mount Kisco’s West Patent Elementary, Thomas Knoff of the Browning School, Christian Baccay of Bedford, and Sunjav Singh of New York’s Allen Stevenson School. Nicholas Lombardi and Christopher Rovinski of the Collegiate School of New York City tied for 10th with 3 ½ points, drawing each other in the third round.

Hunter College won the Top Team Trophy with 13 points (Jesse Weinstein and Samuel Everett 4, Bryce Demopoulos 3, Christopher Chan and Sean Sidi 2), besting the Buckley School (Max Trahan, Peter Coumantaros, William Weinstein and Mateo Welch all with three points) by a point. The Browning School (Thomas Knoff 4, James Donarski, Felix Baur, Max Chung, Sebastian Rodriguez, William Eun, and Jonathan Shah all with 2) was third with 10 points.

Steve Immitt was the Chief Tournament Director for the Continental Chess Association, and headed an outstanding staff that included Sophia Rohde, Walter Brown, Bill Townsend and Harold Stenzel,Andre Harding,Kofi McGreen, Hector Rodriguez and Brian Poteat.