| National Junior High Begins in Atlanta |
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| By Todd Andrews | |
| April 25, 2014 | |
 Chances are that if you have ever been a tournament chess
player in the Southeastern United States, then you have competed in Atlanta
before. It has long been one of the leading chess cities in this part of the
country. For the past two decades, you may have done battle in the infamous "House of Pain" also known as the Atlanta Chess Center that sadly shut its doors a few years back. You may have traveled through for one of the keenly managed Georgia Chess Association events that determines Georgia's State Champions or perhaps played at the prestigious Emory University summer events. You could have played chess in a house, mall, university, hotel or even a pub if you made enough trips to Atlanta. Now well over one thousand of the nation's sharpest students are converging on the South's top chess town to determine this year's National Junior High Champions. 2014 is an anomaly for our teams from Nashville, Tennessee. For the first time in some years, we are forced to pack up and hit the road as the Opryland Hotel is taking a year off from hosting. This time around, the luxurious downtown Hyatt will be our stomping ground. The location of this year's hotel is in close proximity to local spots such as the Coca-Cola Museum, The Georgia Aquarium, CNN's headquarters and Atlanta's Olympic Stadium. So for those students who win quickly, there will be plenty for them to go and see in between games. As is typical of these national events, students start out on Thursday with the championship events in bughouse--in which Head & Mcdonald came clear first. In the blitz chess, Andrew Liu and Arshaq Saleem tied for first. For our team riding the bus down, we only had a chance to make it to the main event which runs Friday at 1 PM through late Sunday afternoon. Check back into CLO this weekend and then early next week for further reports that I promise to deliver in the format of an instructional chess lesson! You can also bookmark this page for standings & pairings. Good luck to our Nashville Chess Center teams University School of Nashville and Montgomery Bell Academy and, of course, to all the chess kids doing battle this weekend! Links: Bug standings Blitz Standings Nashville Chess Center Georgia Chess Association |
