Winner
The 2015 Toronto Blitz Chess Champion is Nikolay Noritsyn.
See complete results at chess-results.com
The 2015 Toronto Blitz Chess Champion is Nikolay Noritsyn.
See complete results at chess-results.com
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Harmony Zhu has played regularly at Annex Chess Club and at Scarborough Chess Club. Current World Youth Under-8 Girls’ Chess Champion, she has also won national piano competitions. Watch the segment on EllenTV.
Harmony is as charming as she is talented, and her media interviews are already legend in the chess community. When it comes to coaches taking credit for their students’ success, here’s an excerpt from Harmony’s interview at the World Youth Chess Championship (where she won gold) when asked about her chess coach, Canadian IM Nikolay Noritsyn.
– Do you have a personal coach at the moment? Chess coach?
HARMONY: … Yes.
– If it is not secret, can you tell us about your coach?
HARMONY: He’s a very good coach. He taught me very … nice things. Lots of things.
– Is he a grandmaster? Or he is not?
HARMONY: I don’t know.
– What is your coach’s name? Because I think your coach … probably deserves some credit here for … the excellent coaching he has –
HARMONY: Oh, oh by the way, you know I have a pet guinea pig?
– A guinnea pig –
HARMONY: And his name is Scrumptious.
– Scrumptious?
HARMONY: He’s a white guinea pig.
– White guinea pig!
HARMONY: Yeah, right now he’s back at my home.
– Does he know how to play chess?
HARMONY: No.
– Are you going to teach him to play chess?
HARMONY: I’ll try but I’m not sure if he can learn it.
– Maybe he will become Guinea Pig Chess World Champion one day.
HARMONY: Maybe!
Apart from Nikolay earning a new nickname, the following image was poking out from behind a photograph in the latest issue of Canadian Chess News on a page showing a chess coach accepting a CYCC medal on behalf of his student who had left early.
John Upper’s caption was: “Some coaches have to take all the credit.”
From the neo-Gothic architecture of the building to the huge ceilings of the Great Hall, chess tournaments don’t get any more beautiful than this. It’s chess as you see it in the movies!
Organized by U of T’s Hart House Chess Club, this top-notch event has 128 players pre-registered – among them, some of the best players in the nation. In the Open Section, Slovakia’s IM Peter Vavrak and Spain’s IM Renier Castellanos join Canada’s elite: GM Bator Sambuev, IM Nikolai Noritsyn, IM Lawrence Day, and six other players with international titles. In the class sections, club players young and old – including five brand new, unrated players – are battling it out for rating points and prizes.
If you’ve never played in a real, CFC-rated tournament before, don’t miss this opportunity: Hart House is offering free tournament entry if you join CFC for the first time!
Note: If you plan to play Round One, make sure you get to the site for 5:30 pm at the latest. And don’t forget to bring your own chess clocks and chess pieces. Only boards are provided.
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David Cohen, chess historian and author of the Canadian Chess Info files (which now form much of the content of the new CFC website), has announced the Canadian Chess Player of the Year – GM Mark Bluvshtein!
Congratulations, Mark!
Official winners (based on a poll of chess journalists)
1. Mark Bluvshtein (=1st at the Continental Championship, played Aeroflot, Capablanca, Groningen, Tata Steel, World Cup, etc.)
2. Bator Sambuev (won Canadian Closed, hit highest-ever Canadian rating of 2753)
3. Michael Song (won World U-10 bronze at WYCC, won Toronto Junior Championship)
Fan favourites (based on an online vote)
1. Melissa Giblon (won Canadian Girls’ U-12 at CYCC)
2. Nikolay Noritsyn (won Québec Open, Toronto Thanksgiving Open, =1st at Toronto Labour Day Open, etc.)
3. Mark Bluvshtein (the official winner; see above)
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The tournament is under way! Check results.
Canada is sending a forty-player contingent (with five or six players participating in some of the age and gender categories) to the 2011 World Youth Chess Championships in Brazil.
See the complete list of Canadian team members, below.
This year’s Canadian team coaches are Nikolay Noritsyn, Andrew Peredun, and Mikhail Egorov; head of delegation is Andrew Giblon; assistant head of delegation is Gary Gladstone; and CFC youth co-ordinator is Patrick McDonald.
WYCC is an annual world chess championship for youth under 18, with boys’ and girls’ U8, U10, U12, U14, U16, and U18 categories. It takes place this year from November 17 to 27 in Caldas Novas, a hydrothermal resort town in Brazil. The event was last in Brazil sixteen years ago, in 1995, albeit under a different name. (The tournament was previously known as the World Children’s Cup, and still earlier, the Cadet Championships.)
The big news from last year’s WYCC was Jason Cao winning gold for Canada in U10 Open. Jason placed third at this year’s CYCC (he’s now playing in U12 Open) but he has decided not to join the Canadian WYCC team in Brazil.
Canada has several strong entrants in this year’s World Youth Championship, particularly in the U12 Open section, where Olivier Kenta Chiku-Ratte, Michael Song, and Razvan Preotu are initially ranked 8th, 12th, and 22nd.
The 2011 Canadian Youth Chess Championship – held in Richmond Hill this July, just before the Canadian Open – was a mandatory qualifying event for WYCC participants. Check MonRoi’s pictures from the 2011 CYCC.
Good luck to all our Canadian players in Brazil!
October 29: 8-year-old Rohan Talukdar is featured in the Windsor Star
Read the story, “Windsor’s budding chess star…”
November 7: Jeannie Zhang, Rachel Tao, and Lily Zhou are featured in the Windsor Star
Read the story, “Chess mates headed for world tourney”
Check for the latest updates:
Check official CYCC standings and CAN WYCC team.
U-8 Girls | U-8 Open | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Taylor Zhang | 1164 | Richmond Hill, ON | 1 | Sergey Noritsyn | 1637 | Richmond Hill, ON | |
2 | Jeannie Yiying Zhang | 1015 | Windsor, ON | 2 | Luke Pulfer | 1445 | Surrey, BC | |
3 | Frank Wang | 1344 | Toronto, ON | |||||
Rohan Shyam Talukdar | 1208 | Windsor, ON |
U-10 Girls | U-10 Open | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Constance Zhaoxing Wang | 1369 | Toronto, ON | 1 | Yuanchen Zhang | 1978 | Markham, ON | |
Varshini Paraparan | 919 | Toronto, ON | 2 | Dinny Wang | 1339 | Mississauga, ON | ||
Lily Zhou | 868 | Windsor, ON |
U-12 Girls | U-12 Open | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Melissa Giblon | 1528 | Thornhill, ON | 1 | Olivier Kenta Chiku-Ratte | 2046 | Montreal, QC | |
2 | Qiyu Zhou | 1811 | Ottawa, ON | 3 | Razvan Preotu | 2155 | Burlington, ON | |
3 | Rachel Tao | 1160 | Windsor, ON | Michael Ji Yu Song | 2102 | North York, ON | ||
Dorsa Moayyed | 1013 | North York, ON |
U-14 Girls | U-14 Open | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Joanne Foote | 1533 | Richmond, BC | 1 | Richard Wang | 2329 | Edmonton, AB | |
2 | Louisa Qian Qian Hou | 1483 | LaSalle, QC | 2 | James Fu | 2119 | Scarborough, ON | |
3 | Rebecca Giblon | 1620 | Thornhill, ON | Agastya Kalra | 1995 | Ottawa, ON | ||
Yimang Yang | 1758 | Mississauga, ON | ||||||
Mark Plotkin | 1912 | Thornhill, ON | ||||||
Bryant Yang | 1681 | Thornhill, ON |
U-16 Girls | U-16 Open | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2 | Myriam Roy | 1987 | Varennes, QC | 1 | David Zhang | 2186 | Calgary, AB | |
3 | Regina-Veronicka Kalaydina | 1946 | Calgary, AB | 2 | Nikita Gusev | 2272 | Richmond Hill, ON | |
1 | Chang Yun | 1828 | Brossard, QC | Mikhail Ivanov | 2156 | Toronto, ON | ||
Tina Fang | 1736 | London, ON | Konstantin Semianiuk | 2207 | Toronto, ON | Kimia Moayyed | 1155 | North York, ON | Simon Gladstone | 2076 | Thornhill, ON |
U-18 Girls | U-18 Open | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Yelizaveta Orlova | 2015 | Toronto, ON | 1 | Loren Laceste | 2238 | North Vancouver, BC | |
3 | Linda Fu | 954 | Toronto, ON |