Overview
At the halfway mark of the North American Corporate Chess League’s ninth season, Symetra stands atop the leaderboard at an impressive 31.5 points. This is an amazing score, bolstered by four very strong players on the Symetra team: GM Andrey Stukopin, GM Vladimir Belous, IM Irakli Beradze, and IM Yannick Kambrath.
The star of the show is IM Beradze, who was the only player to start Thursday with a 6-0 score, and he was able to maintain perfection with wins over IM Kyron Griffith (Lyft), GM Andrey Baryshpolets (PricewaterhouseCooper), and NM Matias Shundi (Jane Street). With a 9/9 score and having already faced many of the titled players in the league, Beradze seems to be an unstoppable force for Symetra.
Many other top companies are by no means out of the race for first place. There are many other strong players competing in season 9, who will be certain to make their presence remembered in the second half of the season.In second place is Jane Street, with 27.5 points. With multiple titled players on their team, they will be the ones to watch to catch up to first place. Tied for third place are Ernst & Young and PwC with 26 points, while Google rounds out the top 5 with 25 points. The full team standings at “half time” can be seen here.
Individual Standings
In the individual standings, besides the aforementioned incredible performance by Irakli Beradze, GM Andrey Stukopin (Symetra) maintains an excellent score of 8.5/9, good for second place, while Saikat Nath (EY) is by himself in third place at 8 points. There are many players with great performances just behind on 7.5 and 7 points.
With so much to play for in the final three weeks, we expect the NACCL to continue producing very high-level games and results!
Replay your games, your teammates’ games, or any other NACCL games here.
Game Analysis
IM Kyron Griffith (Lyft) annotates 4 games every week.
If you feel as though you played an interesting game, please feel free to send Kyron a link to the game via lichess. His account is @kyrongriffith
League Puzzles
Play a nice tactic in the league? Send it to Grant Oen @go2006
Commentary and Lectures
FM Gauri Shankar commentated live, which you can replay here. Don’t miss GM Ashwin Jayaram’s Monday Chess Improvement lecture at 8:00pm Eastern!
Season 9 Partners
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