2032 young chess enthusiasts attended the 2003 U.S. Chess Federation National K12/Collegiate Chess Championship held this past weekend at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare and the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois.

Grade level champions are:

• Kindergarten: Benjamin Rabinowitz, Alexander Velikanov and Jeevan Karamsetty are co-champions with 6.0 points each
• 1st Grade: Jonathan C Chin with 7.0 points
• 2nd Grade: Sam A Schmakel with 7.0 points
• 3rd Grade: Ray S Robson with 7.0 points
• 4th Grade: Michael Lee with 7.0 points
• 5th Grade: Mark A Heimann with 6.5 points
• 6th Grade: Fabiano Caruana with 7.0 points
• 7th Grade: Medina Parrilla with 6.5 points
• 8th Grade: Daniel J Ludwig with 6.5 points
• 9th Grade: Eric Rodriguez, Aaron Kahn, Francisco Guadalupe, Christopher Williams, Jason Mielke, Alexander King and Adam A Holmes are co-champions with 6.0 points each
• 10th Grade: Kazim Gulamali with 6.5 points
• 11th Grade: Keaton F Kiewra with 6.5 points
• 12th Grade: Kyle L Jones and Ryan Rob Milisits are co-champions with 6.0 points each
• Collegiate: Dennis Rylander and Andrei Zaremba are co-champions with 6.5 points each

For each section there are also team winners which are comprised of taking the top three players from each school in each grade, adding together their scores for determining team scores. The following schools won the national team chess championship for their grade. When more than one school is listed, the schools are co-champions:

• College: University of Texas at Dallas with 18.5 points
• 12th Grade: Barrington High School, Barrington, RI with 15.5 points
• 11th Grade: Glenbard West, Glen Ellyn, IL with 15.5 points
• 10th Grade: Gulliver School, Miami, FL and Evanston Township High School, Evanston, IL tied with 14.5 points each
• 9th Grade: Franklin County High Sch., Rocky Mount, VA with 15.0 points
• 8th Grade: IS 318, Brooklyn, NY and Hunter College High Sch., New York, NY tied with 14.5 points each
• 7th Grade: MS 118, New York, NY with 16.0 points
• 6th Grade: Hunter College High Sch., New York, NY with 14.0 points
• 5th Grade: PS 6, New York, NY with 15.5 points
• 4th Grade: Hunter College High Sch., New York, NY with 17.0 points
• 3rd Grade: Columbia Grammar, New York, NY with 14.5 points
• 2nd Grade: Americo Paredes Elem., Brownsville, TX with 15.0 points
• 1st Grade: Collegiate, New York, NY and Phoenix Country Day School, Phoenix, AZ tied with 11.5 points each
• Kindergarden: Americo Paredes Elem., Brownsville, TX with 8.0 points

The event began with a blitz tournament held on December 11. Gabriel Pefesch won the Blitz K6 Championship with 9.5 points and Kazim Gulamali and Griffin Gibson tied to win the blitz tournament for players in grades K-12 with 9.0 points each. Blitz chess is played with a time control of five minutes per player per game!

The second side-event was the Bughouse Tournament which is a chess variant involving two-player teams. The teams of Kazim Gulamali and William J Stewart, Paul J Guthrie and Ryan Rob Milisits, and Christopher Hulse and Kyle L Jones tied to win the Bughouse Championship with a score of 9.0 points each.

The United States Chess Federation, founded in 1939, serves as the governing body for chess in the United States and is devoted to extending the role of chess in American society. It promotes the study and knowledge of the game of chess, for its own sake as an art and enjoyment, and as a means for the improvement of society. The USCF is a not-for-profit membership organization with more than 90,000 members. For more information, please see http://www.uschess.org.