USATE 2017

For the first time, the chessbrahs participated in the US Amateur Team East competition in Parsippany,New Jersey which ran from February 18-20. The idea had originated last year but this time around everything fell into place this year for our participation. The team was cemented already in November featuring two chessbrahs and two chessbrah twitch subscribers: 1.Hansen 2.Hambleton 3.Eric Kurtz 4.Daniel Naylor with an average rating of around ~2180 USCF (the cap is 2200). The tournament was not FIDE rated and our main goal was to have a good time while being competitive in the standings.

6 rounds of classical chess over three days, over one thousand players, and a few nightly social gatherings meant that the tournament went by super quickly. The team started strong with 3/3 but collapsed towards the end to finish off with 4.5/6 and a final ranking of 17th which was similar to our pre-tournament seeding. I managed to squeek out 6/6 on board one while Aman scored 5.5/6 on board two. Due to our good start and top-heavy lineup it meant that we were underdogs on the other two boards which eventually caught up to us although I think both guys did a fine job facing higher rated opposition.

Team Chessbrah at the US Amateur Team East 4.5/6
4 wins 1 loss 1 draw
1. Hansen 6/6
2. Hambleton 5.5/6
3. Kurtz (manneredmonkey on twitch) 2.5/6
4. Naylor 2/6

Here is one of my games: it turned out my opponent was the oldest participant of the tournament at 85. Also attached is a photo of our team in action courtesy of Vanessa Sun. Stay tuned in March because both Aman and myself will head to Europe for some chess which we will report about on here!

-Eric