We held the MS Championships this year at the same time as the Elementary Championships with amazing success! Everyone had a great time in an upscale and relaxed environment. We had 3 sections (OPEN, RESERVE (U1400) and a U1000). Ratings of players ranged from 400 to over 1900! Despite the difference in skill, the separated rating sections allowed every player to get a great, balanced and challenging game. The winners of each section are:
- OPEN – Alec Ho and Peter Marriott (4.0) Co-Champions
- RESERVE – Heather Young (4.0)
- U-1000 – Ian Convy (4.0)
The event boasted over 70 players from around the State. We made a number of changes to prior year formats that everyone truly appreciated. We plan to do the same next year.
One change we are planning for the OPEN Section at the request of the parents and players – This will be a 2 day, G/90 Event. We are still working the schedule out but it is clear that players of the caliber Washington State is generating, our players demand longer games and the time necessary to play them. Our current thinking is to make all games G/90 (so that players do not need to “shift” between different time controls during the event). We are still working out the schedule. When determined, we will post it here for community feedback.
A HUGE THANK YOU to all that supported the event!
A link to the final standings can be found HERE
Congratulations to Odle Middle School! They are the current MS Champions for this year with an UNDEFEATED Record (winning all 12 of their games).
Placings were as follows:
1st – Odle Team A
2nd – Pine Lake Team C
3rd – Overlake
4th – Pine Lake Team A (on tiebreaks with Overlake)
This was a very competitive event with great games for all levels of play because the community came out to support it! This was not just “the top teams”, but an event for all Middle School Players.
We also thank Lynden Christian, Assumption, Alderwood Middle School and St. Thomas More for bringing so many teams, making this a fun event for all!
We have selected St Thomas More Church in Lynnwood WA to be the site of the event. The site is 10 minutes away from the I-5 Freeway and the previous site we had selected. This was done for cost reasons due to the low turnout. We currently stand at 4 teams committed so we intend to play a round robin event to determine a true champion.
If you think you want to field a team, please contact us immediately at rick.jorgensen@gmail.com. Directions to the event will be sent to players via email.
Hey Everyone! Here is an update on the MS Championships!
MS TEAM Championships will be held on March 20th at St Thomas More Church . There will be 4 G/45 rounds and kids from the same school district can play together if they do not have enough on a single school. For registration, email us at rick.jorgensen@gmail.com
The MS INDIVIDUAL Championships will be help on April 24 at the Marriot Hotel in Tacoma (across from the Convention Center). There are NO QUALIFIERS REQUIRED and is open to ALL WA State kids Grades 5-9. There are cash awards in the with small “memento trophies” to the winners. The more players signup, the more cash will be available for awards!
The OPEN is a Four round G/60 event and the RESERVE Section is a Four Round G/45 event.
Registration is OPEN NOW and gets more expensive the longer you wait to sign up. There is a maximum capacity of 150 kids so don’t wait till the last minute. Scholarships are available for those requiring financial assistance.
Registration is now open at www.chess4life.com under the MS Individual Chess Championships on 4/24.
If you have any questions, contact Rick Jorgensen at rick.jorgensen@gmail.com
February has few events for Middle School this year – but there ARE events! Here are two you should consider….
- The Northwest Grade Level at Bryant Elementary (Seattle) on 2/6 has a special 7-8 section. Let’s bring a BUNCH of us and show everyone that we have a strong community that supports Middle School!
- The Mountlake Terrace BUGHOUSE in Lynnwood on 2/13 is a fun event for all, with a K-12 section for older kids. No need to have a partner, we will match you up with someone at registration.
Both events can be found at www.chess4life.com
We’ve been talking to Elliot Neff from Chess4Life about what can be done to support Middle School Chess in the Seattle Area. He has agreed to host events with a 7-12 OPEN with CASH AWARDS. To make it more appealing to players, he agreed to make 50% of the total entry fee turned into prize money.
What does that mean? Simple. The more kids that play, the bigger the cash prizes will be. We thank Chess4Life for offering to make this possible. In addition, the Mountlake Terrace Chess Club has offered to donate $100 to one tournament each month for the 1st place award. That means one event a month is GUARANTEED to have a $100 first place award.
If anyone is interested in the Seattle area, check out the
- Heritage Event (signup at www.chess4life.com) on 1/9 (cash awards)
- Meridian Park event (signup at www.chessplayer.com) on 1/16 (trophies).
If we can get a bunch of kids to show up there, we should be well on our way to rebuilding Middle School Chess in Seattle once again!
In Middle School, its not as obvious to find an event that you can play in. Here are a couple suggestions. Please note that we are not “recommending” any of these, we are just getting the word out to anyone interested in continuing to compete.
In the Seattle Area – Chessmates Fall Kickoff on 11/14 is a large event that has a section for 5-8th grade. This usually fills up pretty fast so you want to play. This is an event for all levels of skill. You can sign up here.
Also in the Seattle Area, the Washington Class on Thanksgiving weekend (11/27) has a 7-12 OPEN section. You can sign up here.
In the Tri-Cities area, the Queens Quest with Knights on the Side will let you join the fun as well on 11/14. Contact David Sommers (dsommers@libertychristian.net) for more information.
Based on feedback from a number of parents, we moved the MS Individual Championships to the same location and venue as the Elementary School Championships. As word starts to filter out, we have received some concerns that we are “competing” with the Elementary Championships. We assure you that this is not so.
The reason for moving the event in this manner was to allow the greatest number of players to participate in Middle School Events. Last year, there were only 30 kids that supported the event. By moving it to our current location, we expect more kids to be able to participate, making it a better event for everyone.
We also recommend that if your child qualifies for the State Elementary event, you support that one. You are certainly welcome to attend the MS Event if your child is in Grades 5-9 but we want to stress that we believe we take a second seat to the Elementary event. We are working very closely with this year’s Elementary Organizer and we are working hard to make sure that the entire community is served with high quality chess.
Some folks have asked “Why do you include 5th Grade?”. “There is no clear definition for “Middle” or “Junior High” school in Washington State. We started our search with the source of the NW Rating System. From there, we checked a large number of school web sites to see what grades they supported. We found several that serviced 5th – 8th grade and called themselves “Middle School”. There was also 1 that included 9th grade. We chose to be as inclusive as possible and allow Grade 5, 6 and 9 in based on that rational. We could have been more exclusionary and created a complicated set of rules to exclude a number of kids from playing but we decided that the purpose was to get more kids to play, not less. We hope that clears things up.
One last note – The Middle School events are all non-profit events. Our objective is to make sure that any surplus is put back into the community. Like WHSCA, no one is here to make money off the event – just assure that kids can have a great time.
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to post them here. If you have a question, chances are that someone else is thinking it, too……
As I talk with parents, a common issue I hear is “I’d love my child to play on a team but we don’t have enough kids in the school!”. This is evident by the number of kids that play in the MS Team Championships vs the “Mini-Teams”.
We are proposing that the primary mission of the Middle School Chess Association is to grow the number of kids that play in Middle School – first and foremost. We believe that with greater participation numbers, we can build a stronger program.
To achieve that goal, we are making some changes to the rules that allow teams of SCHOOL DISTRICTS to be formed if there are not enough kids in a single school to form a team. By banding together more kids, we hope to make Team Chess more accessible to Middle School kids in the State.
This is a break from the past and we are also putting in place safeguards to prevent the creation of “Super-Teams”. We are planning to empower a committee with the discretion of investigating and making determinations on accusations of creating “Super-Teams” so that all will have a fair advantage. We hope to appeal to “common sense” solutions as opposed to overly legalistic approaches.
This board is the forum for this discussion. Please place your thoughts and opinions here so that we can involve everyone in the process of coming to the best possible solution.
This web site middleschoolchess.com offers you several options for reading our content.
- Visit our site using a bookmark, and you’ll see recent news at the top.
- Add yourself to our newsletter distribution list (as soon as we finish writing the signup system) and the articles will show up in your e-mail in-box.
- Subscribe to our RSS feed, and your feed reader will highlight new articles as they’re published. There are free RSS readers but you may find that your e-mail system (including MS Outlook) already has a very good one built-in!
We hope these articles will be much more interactive than most web sites, and invite you to comment on them. This gives more students and parents a chance to share questions and information about middle school chess. We’d like to build a chess community that supports each other through grades 5-9.
I hope you find one or more of these methods very convenient for you. Please participate!
We are currently accepting comments on the honor system; there is no log-in or authentication involved. If this becomes a problem then we may require registration to make comments, but let’s keep it easy and simple for now.
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April 26, 2010 10:57 am | 
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