The Princeton Day School Chess Team competed in the New Jersey Grade Championship on November 22, 2015 in Lincroft. Pictured from right to left are Jai Kasera (Princeton), Arjun Kumar (Moorestown), and Winston Ni (Princeton), holding their trophy for the fifth grade team.
Twenty chess players from Princeton Day School competed in the New Jersey Grade Championship on November 22, 2015 at the Brookdale Community College in Lincroft. This annual tournament decides the champion in each grade.
Players Winston Ni in fifth grade and Eric Wu in fourth grade each won the Championship trophy. PDS teams also took first place in the first grade, second place in fourth grade, first in fifth grade, second in sixth grade and first in seventh grade.
Ni, a player who has been at PDS since PreK, rated over 1900 and won the National Championship, the NJ State Championship and the New York City Championship last year. He was recently invited to compete at the World Youth Championship in Greece, the highest level of international competition among players his age. At the NJ Championship, Winston placed first in the fifth grade section leading the team of Jai Kasera (10th place) and Arjun Kumar to first place team.
The first grade team of Aiden George, Christian Lopez-Watt, Dhruv Nair, Eric Jiang (5th) and Isaac Kusminsky competed as a team at their first big tournament. Competing in third grade were Clara Shin, Sonia Lackey and Claire Takeuchi. In Fourth Grade, with only two players, First Place Winner Eric Wu and Aadi Shankar won the trophy for second place school team. The sixth graders, primed to go to the National Grade Championship early in December, won second place. Albert Ming placed 5th and Dodge Martinson 6th. Seventh grade girls Delia MaCarthy (10th) and Katie Jain won the second place team trophy. Nick Jain played in the tough 11th grade section.
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