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The Berkeley Chess School's own master class teacher, FM Robin Cunningham, along with teammates and fellow Berkeley Chess Club members Steve Gaffagan, Julian Chan and Todd Rumph took home the 1st place trophy, finishing at 5.5/6, a full point ahead of 2nd place in a pool of 40 teams. The playoffs for the national winning team from North, South and East and West will be played online on March 24.

Berkeley Chess School students, Josiah Stearman, Alexander Magganas, Michael J Wang and Sophia Li also competed as a team and scored over 50%. Alexander Magganas rated 1636 played Andy Applebaum rated 2161 and after 5.5 hours emerged victorious. Well done Alex!

Berkeley Chess School Alumni, Fide Master Andy Lee, David Taylor and Damon Mosk-Aoyama also formed a team scoring 5.0/6. Five players tied for 3rd place with a score or 5/6 among them Andy and David. This is a remarkable result given that it is the only tournament in which David – a PhD student in math at UCLA - ever plays.

Congratulations to all the contestants!

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The Berkeley and Walnut Creek End of Year Team Tournament sign up forms are now online! You can either follow the link on the right hand side of the home page, or you can sign up by clicking here:

Walnut Creek End of Year Team Tournament on March 10th, 2012

Berkeley End of Year Tournament on March 24th, 2012

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at tournaments@berkeleychessschool.org

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This past weekend, the Berkeley Bishops had a match with Norcal House of Chess team. How did they do? Read all about it here: Bishops vs. House of Chess write-up.

You can find photos, pairings and result, an exclusive interview with a Berkeley Bishop member, and more!

Do you have a Facebook or Twitter account? You can follow The Berkeley Chess School on both social sites! By following the Berkeley Chess School, you can get updated information and insights about upcoming tournaments, classes, events, or other great chess articles! You can follow The Berkeley Chess School on twitter by following @berkeleychess. Or by clicking here: Follow @berkeleychess


You can find the Berkeley Chess School facebook page by following this link:



See you there!

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The Northern California International tournament wrapped up January 8th with one of the Berkeley Chess School's alumni finishing first! Sam Shankland went undefeated with 7/9 points. David Pruess, another BCS Alum, finished 27th with 4.5/9. This was an extremely competitive tournament featuring the top players from California. From uschess.org:

"The last but definitely not the least of the reasons that this tournament should be regarded to as elite is the extremely strong field participating, which includes seven Grandmasters and sixteen international masters. Furthermore, entry was limited to players with a FIDE rating of above 2000, and the number of players let in under 2200 FIDE was also limited, to keep the average rating of the tournament high, thus increasing norm chances."

Check out the standings here.

Congratulations to Sam for yet another great win!