Akshat Chandra wins 2015 US Junior Championship

The US Junior Championship is a prestigious tournament with a long history. Among the past winners are former World Champion Bobby Fischer, Arthur Bisguier, Yasser Sairawan, and Hikaru Nakamura. Since 1966 the US Juniors are played as an invitational, separating it from the US Junior Open tournament.

2015 US Junior Closed Championship

For the sixth consecutive edition, the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis hosted this tournament. The time control was 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game plus 30 seconds increment per player per move.

IM Akshat Chandra and FM Arthur Shen went into the eighth round as co-leaders, with 5.0/7. As Caissa would have it, they were pitted against each other in what turned out to be the most crucial game of the tournament.

The crucial showdown between FM Arthur Shen…

… and IM Akshat Chandra

After a peaceful opening, Arthur Shen could only watch in horror as his kingside collapsed completely. Moving to 6.0/8, Akshat launched into sole lead once again with this win.

IM Jeffery Xiong, scheduled to become USA’s latest grandmaster, went into the penultimate round in the second spot with 4.5/7. He played a fine game to eliminate FM Awonder Liang and stay in the race with 5.5/8.

At the end of eight rounds, Akshat needed a draw with the black pieces to seal first-place, when IM Xiong would need a win, to force a playoff.

Akshat took on FM Awonder Liang in the last round…

…while IM Jeffrey Xiong (above right) faced Curran Han.

IM Jeffrey Xiong cleaned up his lowest seeded opponent to pass the ball to Akshat’s court.

And when it mattered, the champion delivered!

With this victory, IM Akshat Chandra became the 2015 US Junior Chess Champion with a score of 7.0/9, earning a spot in the 2016 US Championship. Like Akshat, IM Jeffery Xiong too won his final two games, but had to remain content with the second place at 6.5/9. Jeffrey had a draw more than the champion did.

With six wins and three losses, FM Arthur Shen was the only player in the tournament
with no draws! With this uncompromising play he finished third at 6.0/9.

FM Ruifeng Li finished fourth with 5.0/9

No guns, no electronic devices? The obligatory security check at chess tournaments these days

IM Akshat Chandra with his (we are going to assume) proud father

Adulation and media attention before the young champion plays in YAST (yet another strong tournament)

Checkmate? Rex Sinquefield battles out a tough opponent in the sidelines of the event

Commentators FM Aviv Friedman (black shirt) and GM Ben Finegold (orange)
with the staff at Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis.

Final standings (after nine rounds)

Photos Austin Fuller, annotation Mackenzie Molner

"The Journalist"

Born in 1999, 15-year-old Akshat Chandra is clearly a stellar chess talent. He started playing in 2009, and received a FIDE rating of 1548 in January 2010. In four years and ten months, went from FIDE 1548 to 2489 rating, and is currently the strongest player in his age group in the US.

Akshat started writing for us almost exactly a year ago – with "Quest for a first GM norm" part one and part two. He followed that with numerous reports on our news page, baffling us with his erudite diction and mature style. We suspected that he was receiving assistance, from his parents, perhaps? No, Akshat assured us, he had taken a University course in writing "when I was young". Like when you were eight?

Conducting an interview for his report on the Qatar Masters Open 2014, with the winner Yu Yangyi. The Chinese GM was not comfortable with English, while Akshat's Mandarin was non-existent. So how did they manage? By typing in questions and answers and using Google’s online translator. So clever!

Akshat has participated in two chess evaluation session conducted by Garry Kasparov as part of the “Young Stars – Team USA” program, sponsored by the Kasparov Chess Foundation (KCF) and the Chess Club & Scholastic Center of Saint Louis since 2012. These sessions gather a group of young and promising chess players, who are assessed and evaluated by Garry himself, along with KCF President and FIDE Senior Trainer Michael Khodarkovsky (left in the above picture). At the start of the first session Garry referred to him as "The journalist", knowing his ChessBase reports. The name has stuck.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN You can use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.