Recap

The 1st annual Piermont Chess Blitz Championship was, by all accounts, a massive success! This was the first big event of the year on the very first Saturday of 2025, and it was unprecedented!

31 registered players, ages 7-73, including FIDE and National Masters. It smashed the previous record of 21 set in November. We needed more tables!

This was our first elimination tournament ever. And it was a big hit. We gave out the very first Piermont Cup trophy, and the biggest cash prizes to date!

Before we realized we needed more boards!

We’re ecstatic that the club is growing so quickly. Our goal has always been to be one of the best clubs in the area for casual and tournament chess. We love chess and the joy it brings to the community and you can only expect more to come!

Congratulations to the Winners!

First place, Piermont Cup and $200: Ian Dudley!

Second place, $150: Sunil Weeramantry!

Sunil Weeramantry and Ian Dudley in the Grand Finals

Third place, $100: Ari Drucker!

Ari Drucker (left) and Artem Aleksenko (right) in the quarter finals elimination bracket

Special Thanks

Stephane Derveaux for all his help at the club from setting everything up for the event & bringing extra tables, to loaning us and operating his DGT board so we could capture games digitally, & assisting with tournament director duties among so many other things. He’s one of the original PCC members/founders and we couldn’t do it without him!

Stephane (in blue) watching Danilo Cuellar vs. Artem Aleksenko in the top 16 round 1.

Seth Courtwright for recently donating a laptop to be our designated club computer. This has allowed us to use the television in the room to great effect. It’s a game changer in the organization and presentation of the tournaments, and helps immensely with advertising and announcements.

FM Sunil Weeramantry for gracing us with his presence and offering his advice in some interesting administrative moments.

NM Ian Dudley for also contributing to the prestige of the event. We don’t often host players of the master level and hope this is the start of a growing trend!

Stage 1: Qualifier

The day started a little late, as we soon became overwhelmed by the crowd in our little blue classroom at Piermont Community Center. We had to make quick adjustments for the pleasant surprise, but everyone was excited and very cooperative. Things kicked off at 10:30am after some parking lot, and misplaced prize fund debacles….

The first stage was a 5 round G/5+3 Swiss qualifier. Things moved smoothly from round to round with only a few incidents of faulty clocks, and illegal positions requiring TD intervention.

Tim Blomquist (left) vs. Josh Pinchuk (right)

It was a fun 2 hours of chess with a sold out room. In the end, the top 16 would move on to the double elimination tournament bracket.

Alex Freuman in 7th place had to withdraw at this point, allowing Jacob Kim to qualify for the championship bracket.

Here were the final standings:

This event was not rated by USCF. Many players were “U” unrated because they had either never played a rated blitz event, or didn’t use their USCF member ID to register. This led to some interesting pairings to say the least!

Stage 2: Double Elimination

With almost half the competition eliminated after the qualifier event, we took a short break to set up the brackets for the championship and promptly began the first round. Little did we know this event would go an hour over time due to draws!

In this stage players had to lose twice to be eliminated.

The top players after the quarterfinals were Ian Dudley, Sunil Weeramantry, Danilo Cuellar, & Takki Tanaka, with no losses yet, & Josh Pinchuk, Bobby Burstein, Garry Mardahayev, & Ari Drucker each with one L but managing just fine.

Clockwise from top left, Ian Dudley, Danilo Cuellar, Sunil Weeramantry, & Takki Tanaka

Going into the Quarter-Finals, Bobby Burstein, Danilo Cuellar and Garry Mardahayev were all on fire. But Garry pulled ahead, eliminating Seth Courtwright, his brother Izgil, and Bobby all in a row to make it to the semi-finals.

We also saw the rise of Ari Drucker and Takki Tanaka. Two of the youngest players gave a very strong showing. Ari alone eliminated Artem Aleksenko, Josh Pinchuk, and Danilo Cuellar. And Takki put an end to Garry’s brilliant run.

Ari and Takki first met in the quarter-finals where Takki sent Ari to the losers bracket, but was then stymied by Sunil and sent down himself. Ari and Takki met once again for the semi-finals in the losers bracket. They drew in the first game, and the second! Ultimately it was Ari who came out on top in the third. He would face Sunil in the Losers Finals, and get a chance at the Grand Finals.

Ian Dudley was going strong off the qualifier with a perfect score, and maintained his dominance throughout the winners bracket until the grand finals where Sunil gave him his first loss. But it wasn’t over yet.

The finale couldn’t have been better. After 12-15+ rounds of chess, there were two players left and both had 1 loss. This was it. With the main board moved to a new table out of the afternoon sun, everyone gathered to watch.

Ten minutes later Ian Dudley was the first ever Piermont Chess Blitz Champion!

Thank you to everyone who made this possible. We hope everyone had as much fun as we did and we can’t wait to bring more chess events to Piermont!

Lead Organizer and Tournament Director Billy Zifchak with his prized possession.

Games from Board #1

The following are 10 of the 15 games that were played on Board #1. Some games could not be included because of illegal moves that weren’t claimed and the computer couldn’t analyze them! You can cycle through the moves and click any images to enlarge them. We didn’t have time to provide any analysis this time but the report cards speak for themselves. Enjoy!