Home Page Chess Life Online 2012 November Four Medals for USA: Troff & Sevian Earn Gold
Four Medals for USA: Troff & Sevian Earn Gold |
November 19, 2012 | |
Four US players earned medals at the World Youth Championships in Maribor, Slovenia including Kayden Troff & Sam Sevian, who took gold in Under 14 and Under 12 Open sections, respectively. Cameron Wheeler won the silver medal in the Under 12 Open while Christopher Shen earned bronze in Under 8 Open. See full results of our 80+ delegation on chess results.com. Overall, Team USA won third place behind Russia and India. Medallists were lucky enough to have Garry Kasparov award their medals. Both of our gold medallists Troff and Sevian are even luckier. They are students of the joint program "Young Stars", a program created in partnership with the Kasparov Chess Foundation and the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. Writer & Kasparov aide Mig Greengard @chessninja tweeted about Kayden, "Kasparov was just giving Kayden big ups for his play, especially the round nine win." 6572 Here is Kayden's clutch victory, which allowed him to leapfrog into first place (on tiebreaks over his final round opponent). 6570 Here is one of Sevian's games, against another talented American, Jeffrey Xiong (who finished in 14th). 6571 You can find more pgn files on the latest TWIC or on chessresults.com. Michael Khodarkovsky, head of the US delegation, said: "Congratulations to all coaches and members of the US team." The coaching team included GMs Ben Finegold, Joel Benjamin, Nick De Firmian, John Fedorowicz, Alejandro Ramirez, Gennady Zaitchik, Sam Palatnik, FM Aviv Friedman, IMs Armen Ambartsoumian, Andranik Matikozyan, John Bartholomew & Jan van de Mortel. For a coach's perspective of last round jitters, see Ramirez's report from Sunday morning. |